


In the Wolf's Maw

by NevaRYadL



Category: Far Cry 5
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Blood and Violence, Canon-Typical Violence, Gen, Mentioned Mutilation and Ritualistic Scarring, Other Additional Tags to Be Added, Past Male Deputy/Jacob Seed, Past Relationship(s), References to Drugs, Religious Abuse and Brainwashing, Religious Cults, Religious Fanaticism, Trans Male Deputy, no homophobia or transphobia
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-10-11
Updated: 2021-02-24
Packaged: 2021-03-07 16:34:31
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 15
Words: 47,089
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26940724
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/NevaRYadL/pseuds/NevaRYadL
Summary: Matthew married a nice man years ago, by the name of Jacob Seed.Years later and in current time, Matthew is fighting for his life against a zealous cult after a botched attempt to arrest Joseph Seed, fighting brainwashed people, a drug called Bliss and nature herself in the form of feral and drugged up animals. And one of his biggest problem is that he is still, unfortunately and regrettably, married to that same Jacob Seed.
Comments: 10
Kudos: 111





	1. Wolf's Teeth and Rosary

**Author's Note:**

> WARNING: Mentioned past Male Deputy/Jacob Seed, trans male deputy, canon typical elements (swearing, violence, mutilation/intentional scarring), idealized/romanticized memories of toxic/harmful people cut out of life
> 
> Fic will later contain: Canon typical elements (drug usage and drug abuse, mind breaking and brainwashing, feralization and dehumanization, gore and violence, gun violence). As well as, in depth discussions about emotionally neglectful romantic partners and a failed marriage, mentions of traumatic accidents and mental and physical repercussions of them, mental illness and poor handling of it. 
> 
> Any future topics that might be triggering and upsetting will be tagged in the beginning notes. Transphobia and homophobia will not be part of this story and Deputy will never be deadnamed or misgendered even in memories and flashbacks.

_Dear Johnny,_

_Alright, Johnny, this is the last time that I will ask. I want a divorce from Jake. I need Jake to sign the papers. This is seriously the last time I’m going to try. And before that smart mouth goes on about how I’ve tried for years, you know damn well as I that I would never, will never, have the money to take Jake’s ass to court, nor would I find another silver tongued slime ball to compete with you to represent me in court to settle this once and for all._

_So I’ve had to beg and beg you for years. You know this and you’re hanging this over me, hoping that I’ll give up. Well, enough is enough. This is the last fucking time._

_Seriously, this has dragged on long enough. Let me go. I don’t want to be part of the Seed family, and I don’t want to be married to Jacob Seed anymore. You all had a chance to include me in the family and I ended up in that hospital room bleeding out all by my lonesome. Not a single fucking Seed in sight._

_Make Jake sign the fucking papers._

_Signed, Matthew._

Matthew frowned at the letter. He had sent it out almost two weeks ago. Actual pen and paper in the hopes that John would take him seriously. Years of angry phone calls and angry emails had done absolutely nothing, maybe it had been time to try something different. He actually had hope that maybe years of fucking going back and forth would wear on his brother-in-law somewhat.

Only for the letter that arrived in his mailbox that morning, along with his sent letter.

Thick expensive paper, sealed with an actual wax seal bearing the Seed family mark. It was signed by John from, presumably, his residence. And the letter read:

_Dearest Matthew,_

_I am sorry to inform you, yet again, that your dearest husband will not sign the divorce papers, nor will I encourage him to do so. You are married in the eyes of God, bound through the purest form of connection through holy matrimony, and you will stay there. And you will come home, The Father has foreseen it, and we are all eagerly awaiting at the table for you to join us. The purge is coming and God will see you to our side._

_And again, I cannot express my sorrow that no one was there that fateful day. Jacob has been absolutely heartbroken about it, though you have yet to believe me no matter how many times I try to convey it. But God works in ways beyond our understanding. You certainly seemed to have become stronger from it._

_I hope to see you home soon,_

_Signed, your dearest brother, John._

“Seed!”

Matthew still flinched to that day about his last name getting yelled. Jacob’s last name, not his, because his jackass husband refused to divorce him.

“Sheriff Whitehorse,” Matthew said, standing up from his desk. 

People around him looked just as startled. One too many hours reading up on the Seed case to not suddenly get jumpy at his last name, Matthew figured. People certainly had been treating him differently since the case started. Sure, no one was ostracizing him because he had spoken at length about wanting to divorce his piece of shit husband for years at this point, but people were giving him looks. How could he have fallen for a Seed of all people? No amount of saying ‘they were different people once’ could make up for the monsters that they were now...

“Last chance to back out. Not sure why they’re still willing to let you go to the arrest,” The sheriff said, gesturing for Matthew to follow him, Matthew trailing behind the Hope county sheriff as he probably went to get another cup of coffee from their machine that still made it too strong. Too many long nights given their upcoming warrant warranted the caffeine inhalation.

“I’m positive sir, this… this has been a long time coming. Besides, maybe I can talk some sense in those jackasses, keep things from escalating or getting violent,” Matthew offered.

Whitehorse indeed went into their breakroom and started a pot. His hands were shaking and Matthew was sure that it was not the caffeine doing it. They were all scared. They all knew what the Seed family was doing, they heard the reports, saw what little footage that they could, heard from people still trapped in the county. Hell, even Matthew was scared and his ‘family’ had expressed only their desire to bring him back into the fold. He still had the email from John saying that ‘not a single hair on his head was to be harmed’ should he come to visit. It sounded like John was willing to hurt anyone that tried to hurt him.

“Still…” Whitehorse said, fiddling with the Styrofoam cups.

He sighed.

“Alright, talk to me. Tell me what you can about the Seeds again. Not the files. What _you_ can. It’ll settle my nerves before I puke.”

“We have put a warrant out for the arrest of Joseph Seed. Joseph is a manipulator, a real silver tongued devil. He uses his charm, guile and other underhanded tactics to warp people’s minds. He has that kind of personality that draws uncertain people in and makes them dependent on him, willing to die and throw away their lives for him. If he can’t do it, his brothers can. John is another silver tongued devil, but where Joseph is charismatic, John is a salesman. He’ll sell you being loyal to him and he’ll make you happy for the sale. He sounds like he’s gotten violent, he might be willing to harm or even kill. Jake-- Jacob is…”

Whitehorse tilted his head and looked to him when he paused.

“The husband, right?”

“Not for lack of trying to divorce him, I assure you, sir,” Matthew sighed.

“Still.”

“Jacob is the soldier. He’s served a good chunk of time, he’s seen hell, he’s seen combat. I don’t think he’s quite as passionate about what’s going on so much as following Joseph’s lead and trying to keep an eye on his brothers. Chances are his hands will be the bloodiest though.”

Whitehorse nodded. The smell of burnt, heavy coffee flooded the room. Matthew’s tongue was dry and acidic tasting.

“The fucking Seed family… sir, how the hell did you ever get mixed up with them?”

“They were different, once.”

* * *

At forty years old, Matthew had really hoped that his life would be smooth sailing and that he would be on his way to retiring.

But instead, Matthew was stuck in marriage he had come to resent, and really just getting started in his career in law enforcement. He still very much felt like that lost, scared, scarred and confused twenty something year old with his bag over one shoulder and months of backed up tears flowing down his face as he realized that the man that he had loved with all of his heart did not love him back. Being alone and half dead in a hospital from a near fatal car crash without a word from his ‘loving family’ had told him that. And remembering months of his husband going back into tour and going back up to those fucking mountains finally broke through and remained proof enough to keep him away afterwards.

Going to arrest his brother in law? Was just making things worse. He still felt so fucking scared.

“Come on, kid,” Pratt said as they loaded up into the helicopter.

“You keep talking wise, asshole,” Matthew grunted, fiddling with the strap to his vest.

“Would you give it a rest, Pratt? Seriously,” Hudson snapped, reaching over and swatting Pratt upside the head. “We don’t need you two fighting on a good day and today is a very shitty day.”

“Maybe I’m just letting off steam on the rookie of the team,” Pratt muttered.

“Oh, you’re so cute, making fun of the rookie on the team because he’s oldest. Super cute Pratt! I can’t understand why you don’t have women hanging off your arms or that you’ve been single for months,” Hudson drawled, bitterly and cuttingly sarcastic. “Fuck off, Staci.”

Pratt glared at her, looking ready to fight, only to have Whitehorse stomp between them.

“Bitch each other out AFTER we get this nutcase. End of discussion.”

They piled in, Matthew throwing Pratt one last sour look before getting in and buckling up. Staci just snorted but looked at his feet, like he did when he realized that one of their spats was ill timed and felt a little shitty about it. Matthew made a note to see if they could ‘make up’ over dinner at one point. They did not have to like each other, but they needed to be civil on work hours at least.

Still… was going to be a long flight. It was already getting dark and it would take some time to fly out there…

Matthew took out his phone and looked at the footage of the undercover agent getting discovered again. It would keep the fire in his belly and keep him on the path at least. Even if seeing the man that he had lovingly called Jo-Jo for years, cooked Sunday dinner for him, had lovingly teased and hip bumped him and laughed at his jokes and asked if he was well and eating… digging his thumbs into an innocent’s man’s eyes made his stomach churn.

The footage cutting out was a blessing.

“Hey, Rookie. Rookie!” Whitehorse said, gently tapping his knee to get his attention. “Wasting your time, there’s no signal out here.”

Matthew knew the look to his eyes though. _Give yourself a break, we need you for this._

Nodding, Matthew put away his phone, looking up at Burke for a moment before catching a pale glimpse out the window. He grimaced at the sight of the statue of the man he thought he once knew. The man he had once loved like a brother.

“Oh fuck, there he is,” Hudson groaned.

“Crazy motherfucker…”

“Jesus.”

“We’re officially crossing over into Peggie country,” Hudson informed them.

“How much longer?” Burke asked.

“Just long enough for you to change your mind, so we can turn this bird around,” Whitehorse said. 

His and Burke’s eyes flickered up to him. He was the ace in the hole in this, an insurance card. If he had said something right then and there, they probably would have turned the bird around. But he needed to do this. When he said nothing, Burke seemed to perk up just a little bit, squaring his shoulders before holding out the paper to Whitehorse.

“You want me to ignore a federal warrant, Sheriff?”

“No sir,” Whitehorse sighed. “I want you to understand the reality of this situation. Joseph Seed, he’s not a man to be fucked with. We’ve had run-ins with him before and they haven’t always gone our way. Just sometimes… sometimes, it’s best to leave well enough alone.”

“Yeah well, we have laws for a reason, sheriff,” Burke grumbled. “And Joseph Seed is going to learn that.”

Whitehorse sighed, threw him one more look in hope that he would call it off, before sighing when he remained tightlipped.

“Pratt, open a call with dispatch.”

“Ten-four.”

He looked out the window as Whitehorse talked with dispatch, nervous chatter spoke with tired reluctance and steadiness. Whitehorse was a good man, Matthew hoped nothing bad happened to him.

“Should have brought Nancy instead of the probie… I don’t know why you all think they’ll be nice just because we bring him. Nancy’s probably better with a gun--”

“Pratt, shut the fuck up.”

Matthew rolled his eyes, not taking Pratt’s fishing for a fight. Burke changed the subject quickly enough, bless him, as he turned his gaze back out the window. The compound was just below them, fires and a church and a bunch of people that even up high, Matthew could see them carrying serious fire power and bearing war paint? Tattoos? Markings? Something dark.

They sat down smoothly enough. Whitehorse warned them to not fight or even have their guns out, stay close and let him do the talking--

“Rookie?”

“Yes, sir?”

“You’re with me. The Seeds should see you up front with me, got it?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Let’s go.”

Up close and on the ground, everything was worse. If only because there was a moment where Matthew was sure that they would _know_ that he was a Seed. That he was the husband of one of their precious leaders. But they glared at him just like the others as they walked smoothly and quickly towards the church. He walked in stride with Whitehorse as they made their way towards the church and the singing inside. 

Almost reminded him of Sunday church, years and years ago, sitting in a pew with one of Jacob’s arms in his and singing his heart out with the choir while John and Jacob sang along more modestly. Jacob never sang, just watched him with a slight smirk on his face. He always huffed and pouted and told Jacob to stop being amused by his terrible singing. Jacob always said that he would never.

At the gates and Matthew could feel the anxiety mounting. Something bitter was on the back of his tongue, his palms were slick with sweat that he tried desperately to wipe on his pants.

“Hudson, on the door. Watch our backs. Don’t let any of these people get in. Seed... Rookie... you're on me,” Whitehorse said at the door.

Matthew nodded and tried to swallow his bile.

“And you, just try not to do anything stupid,” Whitehorse grumbled at Burke.

“Relax sheriff,” Burke said, though Matthew did not miss his hands tightening into fists. “You’re about to get your name in the paper.”

“You’ll be fine,” Hudson whispered to him as Whitehorse opened the doors. He gave her a nod and a tight smile before breathing out raggedly and following Burke and Whitehorse into the church.

Bathed in soft light at the very back…

“Something is coming. You can feel it, can’t you? That we are creeping towards the edge…”

They slowly advanced into the church, heading towards that figure still bathed in soft light. Towards that voice that Matthew knew all too well. It used to call him a different name, and it changed when he did, but it still sounded the same. That same, level tone that held genuinely believed compassion and softness that Matthew remembered reading bible verses and gently chiding him over some slightly saucy joke he made just to get scolded. Because seeing Joseph, dressed all prim and proper, giving him a slight smirk and telling him that good church going folk would make that kind of saucy joke and then laughing when Matthew declared himself a perfect angel, was always worth it.

“There will be a reckoning. That’s why we started The Project. Because we know what happens next. They will come. They will try to take from us. Take our guns. Take our freedom… take our faith!”

They were close enough to see through the light now. There was Joseph Seed, shirtless and wearing only a pair of worn jeans. Aviator glasses and long hair tied up into a neat little bun. Matthew’s chest hurt because part of him saw Jo-Jo, his religious but sweet and kind brother-in-law… he also saw Joseph Seed, wanted for a laundry list of crimes and whom he had seen video evidence of killing at least one person.

“But we will not let them.” 

“Come on sheriff--”

“Now hold on Marshall.”

“We will not let their greed, or their immorality, or their depravity hurt us anymore! There will be no more suffering!”

Too much was happening at once. Whitehorse and Burke were quietly arguing, Matthew could hear people shuffle to their feet behind them and the familiar sound of guns being quietly handled and--

Jacob Seed.

Jacob… fucking… Seed… was walking up behind Joseph. Joseph’s bulwark against the world. Matthew kept his head down and felt his heart beat a taboo against the back of his ribs. Still the same. Burn scars on his face and arms, red hair with shaved sides and a bit of an untamed beard. He always remembered cooing for Jacob to clean it up a little and Jacob always distracting him so that he would forget. He always forgot.

“Joseph Seed! I have a warrant issued for your arrest on the suspicion of kidnapping with the intent to harm! Now. I want you to step forward and keep your hands where I can see ‘em!”

Joseph raised his hands, keeping his face calm and serene. A rosary dangled from one hand and Matthew felt a very painful pinch at the familiar sight of it. He had gotten Joseph that when he had tracked his husband’s wayward brothers down, a ‘and now we’re a family!’ gift. And now that they were so close, Matthew saw marks carved into his skin. The sins carved deep enough to scar into his skin, fresh and painful, still scabbed and puffy in some spots.

“Here they are… the Locusts in our garden… You see they’ve come for me.”

Several armed people suddenly stood in the way, starring the three of them down intently.

“They’ve come to take me away from you. They’ve come to destroy all that we built.”

Burke went for his gun and the church goers went for theirs. Whitehorse quickly de-escalated it, shouting at everyone to stand down. Joseph finally told his people to stand down as well. Panicked, Whitehorse threw him a pointed and pleading look as Joseph parted the church goers, speaking quietly with them. Behind him, John had joined the scene.

“Now… Joseph, we do have someone we hoped would smooth things over, someone we thought… a familiar face would help,” Whitehorse said, reaching out and taking Matthew’s elbow and moving him forward.

Joseph looked at him and frowned in confusion. John and Jacob behind him also frowned in confusion.

After thousands of angry phone calls, Matthew realized that, of course none of them would recognize him physically at this point. He had been transitioning for over ten years at this point, testosterone had been kind and giving him a face that he had dreamed of as well as a beard that he had tended too with quiet joy. Testosterone had also widened his shoulders, actually made him go up a shoe size and had taken away some of the fat of his hips and narrowed him out just a bit. They only knew his voice now. His voice that had gone from bubbly and cute even as an adult and actually dropped like a lead weight and gave him a bit of a rasp that was trademark now. They only knew his voice because how many times had he called John with the intent of a calm conversation only to end up in a screaming match with him because _again_ he was being denied being released from the Seed family.

Matthew swallowed thickly.

“Come on, Jo-Jo. Don’t make this harder than it needs to be,” Matthew said.

Joseph, John and Jacob all jolted at the sound of his voice. The voice that they had become familiar with. Those infamous blue Seed eyes looked at him with thousands of emotions swirling around in them. Matthew felt like he was in the eye of several storms going in and felt a rising acidic panic bubbling in his throat. Even more so when Jacob lurched forward and Matthew reflectively took a step back. An attempt at another step forward, only for Jacob to be stopped by Joseph’s hand on his chest. When John tried to step forward, Joseph also stopped him.

“Our brother has returned to us, as God has told me,” Joseph said, honestly sounding so downright happy that Matthew almost felt a sense of calm, hands on his brother's chest pushing back as Joseph stepped forward with his hands out. “Brought our wayward sheep back home to rejoin the flock.”

“I’m here to arrest you, Jo-Jo,” Matthew said firmly.

Joseph just smirked, like he heard a cloy remark that he knew was false. Matthew used to find comfort in Joseph always being so self assured he was. Now it was just unnerving.

“God will not let you take me,” Joseph said, urging his followers to leave the church. They stared at them as they went, giving glares to Burke and Whitehorse, but looking at him like a sun after a sunless winter. He hated it. “I saw when the Lamb opened the First Seal, and I heard, as it where the noise of thunder, one of the four beasts say, come and--”

“Step. Forward,” Burke gritted out.

Jacob was boring holes into his head, hands down at his sides and shaking, but rooted to the spot that Joseph had stopped him. John looked so torn between what expression that he wanted that Matthew almost blurted out ‘are you okay, Johnny’ just like he used too years ago. Some woman was standing with them, young enough that she might have been a daughter? She looked so achingly young, anyway.

"Come on, Jo-Jo... please."

“--And I saw, and behold it was a white horse…” Joseph stepped forward, pointing at Burke before giving Whitehorse a look… and then turning his head and slowly settling a very unsettlingly calm look onto Matthew. “Hell followed with him.”

And Joseph offered up his hands, holding them out like the plaintive sacrifice. Joseph's eyes bore hell fire into his skull.

“Rookie, cuff this son of a bitch,” Burke bit out.

“God will not let you take me, brother. And you will join us. For you are home.”

“Rookie, the cuffs!”

Matthew stepped forward, Joseph stepping towards him eagerly, putting his hands into Matthew’s shaking ones. Actually, Matthew's hands shook so bad that Joseph had to make a point of holding still to ease Matthew’s burden.

“S-stop staring at me, Jake,” Matthew said, voice quivering like he was going to be sick and the world was shaking apart at the seams underneath his feet, It felt like it. “Stop… stop staring at me… please…”

Seed eyes always cut you the hardest when they were looking at you and Matthew felt like he was bleeding out by the time he finally snapped the cuffs on. Keeping his eyes down, Matthew grabbed Joseph’s shoulder and moved them towards the front of the church before moving him forward, ignoring a carving on Joseph’s shoulder that looked freshly scabbed.

“What the fuck did you do to yourself, Jo-Jo,” Matthew found himself saying.

“I have cleansed myself of my sins, brother,” Joseph said back as they moved out of the church. He lifted his head and shouted over his shoulder. “I will return with him or have him returned, you need not worry, Jacob!”

Matthew dug his hand into Joseph’s shoulder, accidentally pulling on that scab and causing red to smear along the skin. Joseph hardly seemed to notice. He did and he felt every inch of skin crawl all over his body. Matthew moved his hand upwards and pushed Joseph along. He honestly was in too much of a panicked daze to pay attention to the others, just following their voices forwards and hopefully towards the bird. Just had to get home.

“Look, my children, at your fifth herald!” Joseph called to his frenzied followers, that calmed for just a moment to listen with zealous attention to their cult leader. “Remember his face well! He is not to be harmed!”

Matthew kept his face down, squeezing Joseph’s shoulder as chaos brewed and bubbled around them. Matthew was aware that shit was going bad around them, but was too panicked to understand or really soak it in. Just that Hudson was yelling, Whitehorse was yelling, Burke was yelling and Joseph yelled if he yelped when someone from behind tugged on his shirt or pants.

The bird. He remembered getting in and his hands shaking so bad that Burke had to reach over and quickly snap him in before kicking a peggie out. Joseph looked so calm in his seat, catching his eye and just smile that soft and reassuring way that Matthew remembered back then that now made his skin crawl. People were yelling and screaming, grabbing at his pant legs and hands as the bird took off.

People scrambling all over. Matthew remembered shoving one out as she fell screaming to her death. Gunshots. Shaking, screaming. Spinning, jerking, heaving and--

His head cracked against something and that was it.


	2. Fight Back

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> WARNING: Canon typical elements (violence, blood and gore, guns and gun violence, mentioned drug usage/drug abuse, alcohol and alcohol consumption, injuries), idealized/romanticized memories of bad times, language, mentioned traumatic car accidents
> 
> idk I sat down and wrote this in one sitting

When he opened his eyes, he saw that he was upside down and staring at Burke’s bloodied face. The receiver was going off. He tried to swing his aching and sore as hell body towards it, call for help. Shit went so wrong, even with him there. He should have known better. Nothing went right when the fucking Seeds were involved, nothing. And even if Matthew had not involved them in his life for years until now, the tainted name still marked him as fucked up beyond all recognition.

“Amazing Grace. How sweet the sound…”

He clawed frantically at air, heaving his bruised and broken body towards the headset. His fingers met plastic and he grabbed it, almost weeping in relief--

Only to let out a choked sob when Joseph, also bruised and bloodied, grabbed his hand. Using the grip on his wrist, Joseph halted his swinging, letting his bruised body hang there limpy as he just started sobbing.

“That saved a wretch like me…”

His hand, which he was sure was pretty damned hurt in the crash, let go of the headset. He went back to sniffling and whimpering as tears fell down his forehead and into his hair. Joseph tenderly gathered his head, holding him still as those Seed eyes bore into him behind his glasses.

“I told you that God wouldn’t let you take me, brother.”

Honestly, should not have been surprised to find out that Nancy was a Peggie as Joseph called off their backup. Then again, Matthew’s shit luck? The crash was not really a surprise either. Either way, Joseph tossed aside the headset, once again gathering up his head, making him look at those fucking blue Seed eyes.

“Stay. The Faithful will gather you, and you will go to your husband and stand by his side, brother. Eden calls.”

Joseph carefully let go of his head, letting him fall limp into his restraints. He sobbed pathetically as Joseph climbed out of the wreckage. His crying must have woken Hudson and Burke, who stirred next to him. They started clawing at their restraints to get out. Of course, not before the faithful descended on the burning bird, dragging Pratt and Hudson out before he could get out himself, though he still clawed at Hudson’s leg in a frantic motion to try and save her and only failed because as a Seed that was all he was good at. More hands reached to grab him, before the fire sprung up.

“GET HIM OUT NOW! WE NEED HIM ALIVE!”

Burke got out and just fucking left him. Left him to rip and tear at his belt before it finally let him go, leaving him to crawl out the none burning side of the bird.

“DON’T SHOOT!”

He took off, feeling several broken or sprained things cry out as he dashed through the forest, blindly looking to get away. Despite the order not to shoot, several bullets peppered the ground near his feet. One skimmed the side of his calf, an animal’s wretched screech ripping itself from his chest before he kept running as fast as his now burning leg would allow it. 

Running through the woods with a wounded leg was a bit of a blur, punctuated with sharp bursts of sensory data by every step with his injured leg. When he saw a house with the lights on that he could hide in, he went for it, pushing open the door and almost getting tossed to the ground by a frantic Burke, though thankfully Burke saw that it was him before he got a good grip.

“Jesus Christ… Rook. I’m sorry… I thought they got you…” Burke panted. His face was littered with splatters of blood and soot. “Come on… come on…”

Matthew bent down to look at his leg. Thankfully he had been wearing a pair of higher cut good leather boots, but a bullet was a bullet and it had ripped open the leather and cut into the flesh. He gingerly stepped out of his boot and ripping a part of his sleeve off to make a makeshift bandage before stepping back into his boot, grateful for the covering before going to check the rooms. They swept the area, grateful to find the house empty, before hiking down in what looked like the den.

“Oh Jesus! I had no idea. Fuck!” Burke breathed, sounding panicked and strained and winded still. “Even with you there they just…”

“It wasn’t my fault,” He quickly said, his voice still cracking and broken from crying.

“No… fuck just…” Burke turned and saw something, pointing at it and bringing Matthew’s attention to a portrait of the Seed family plus that mysterious young woman. “We’re putting the whole family away. All of ‘em. Fucking lunatics!”

He threw the portrait on the table and Matthew sucked in a breath as he looked at the familiar and foreign faces that looked back. Johnny holding his book, Jake a very large gun, Jo-Jo sitting in a seat and that girl leaning against Jo-Jo’s leg. Nothing about the portrait seemed normal or ‘safe’, it drew only fear. Burke must have turned around and saw him staring, breathing out hard.

“N-not you, Rook. You’re not one of those fucking lunatics. No, you’re gonna help. We’re going to get out of this, Rookie,” Burke said, walking over to a gun case. For once, Matthew was grateful for pea brained, gun toting rednecks out in the backwoods, taking the gun tossed at him and checking it over. “First thing’s first, we gotta arm ourselves.”

Burke took his own and checked it over before going and looking out a window, peering into the darkness.

“Alright, here’s what we’re gonna do. There’s a road out there. We’re gonna take it, we’re gonna head northeast,” Burke said, ducking down for cover and Matthew carefully following. “It’s probably only a few hours back to Missoula. And then we’re gonna come back here with the goddamn National Guard and we’re gonna take out the rest of these--”

“Check out around the trailers, the fifth herald couldn’t have gotten far.”

“Shh,” Burke said softly before jerking his head towards the window.

Matthew carefully shuffled along, taking his borrowed gun out and peering outside briefly, before taking and ramming the mouth of his rifle into the glass to shatter it.

“They’re in there! Bring the fifth herald in alive!”

Matthew had been in shoot outs before. When you worked in a southern state, you dealt with all sorts of people with guns that really should not have guns and further proved it by shooting at local law enforcement over minor offenses. Matthew still hated using his gun and he still hated it now as he opened fire on the peggies trying to blow holes into the trailer that they were in. They were obviously trying to flush them out, but between Burke actually shooting them down and them actually trying to shoot Burke, there was… there was a lot of flying lead.

Burke got a truck started up and they took off. Though the ride was a blur of violence, shooting, people screaming and a lot of heavy weaponry that they really should not have had. It provoked that old fear of violence and cars that Matthew had thanks to that car crash of his. But he gritted his teeth and shot at every armed asshole that shot at them. The plane? The plane he had no goddamn way of shooting at that and a sudden pang of dread lanced through him at the sight, but he kept shooting and throwing the dynamite that was in the back of the truck because at that point, it was the two of them or the gun toting assholes behind them. 

Seemed ol Jo-Jo was blowing hot air about him being spared… typical.

A bridge should have been a warning sign, but there was so much gunfire that Matthew could barely hear himself think. Barely focus on anything other than shooting another person down to stop getting shot at. Honestly, when the bridge blew, Matthew had no idea if it was the plane or if the assholes had artillery fire. Probably both, knowing his luck. But it did not matter, just that there was an explosion that gave Matthew terrible flashbacks and then their truck was in the water.

Burke got out by himself, again. Asshole. He got out too, thankfully, swimming to the top as he swore he heard a fucking chorus singing in his ears. Something in the water. Hauling himself up onto shore and breathing raggedly to try and catch his breath.

“They went into the water! Get the herald!”

Matthew coughed up water, hearing Burke yelling at the peggies in the distance. They had him. Oh fuck, they had him. Matthew’s arms were jelly, unable to hold him.

Unable to stop a man flipping him onto his back, looming over him with a shotgun to his face. Matthew blinked owlishly at him, unable to make out any features. Not that it mattered. The shotgun was put away and the man was hauling him to his feet and then Matthew’s brain promptly checked out.

He swore he heard Joseph’s voice as his brain only processed bouts of information. Leaning against someone as they shuffled along. Then being over someone’s shoulder. Then being dragged into a bunker.

“ _...All save for one. Our missing brother has come home but he has been absconded with. His head is filled with lies about our family, filled with hate and malice by the heretics. He will be brought home, but I need you, my family, to bring him here. He will be part of our family once again._ ”

Darkness once again.

* * *

Matthew woke up handcuffed with a zip tie to a bed frame. All things considering… probably not the worst part of his life the past twenty four hours or so but still something that warranted his yanking on the tie, trying to break it, looking around in a panic to see where he was. Looked like a bunker room, single person, single bed, and--

By a radio still playing Joseph’s voice, he saw a bald man standing there. He jerked against his ties once more, trying to break them with force. Come on… come on…

The man cut the radio off, slowly turning to address him.

“Do you know what that means?”

Wait…

“Dutch!” Matthew laughed, grinning because he knew this man. “Dutch! Oh my god, it’s you!”

Dutch frowned at him and it struck him that Dutch only saw him last when he was just starting to transition. No way that this man would remember him back then.

“Face! Left side of my face, you’ll remember me!”

Dutch sighed, taking a rag from his pocket and crouching down as Matthew leaned forward.

“Hold still kid, you got a bunch of river mud on your--” Dutch said, briskly and quickly rubbing dirt and mud from Matthew’s face for a moment, before stopping. Matthew knew right away that he remembered, based on how big his eyes got and how he jolted back and away from him. “Jesus, Mary, Jo-- holy fuck kid!”

The rag got tossed away and replaced with a knife that cut the tie, letting Matthew manically throw himself into a hug with Dutch. Because old, crotchety, brisk but heart of gold Dutch was his first break in a hell of a day so far and felt like an anchor in a tsunami. Dutch hugged him back, seemingly feeling the same way, patting his back as he just hugged this old bastard and just… a friendly face after what had happened so far.

“Jesus kid, I thought you got away from this shit hole,” Dutch said when Matthew reluctantly let him go.

“Yeah… thought I did too,” Matthew sighed as they both sat on the ground and just looked miserable for a second.

“... The uh… the… the beard’s new,” Dutch awkwardly coughed.

“Please don’t be weird about it, Dutch,” Matthew groaned.

“No, no! It’s not weird, it’s just different and new since last I saw you waiting tables at the Spread Eagle,” Dutch huffed, gesturing to all of Matthew, probably almost mentioning how different that all of Matthew looked in general since he had waited tables at the Spread Eagle. Jesus that felt like a lifetime ago. “Did the uh… marriage ever change?”

“... No.”

“Jesus, kid. Sorry. How come?”

“Fucking Johnny. Silver tongued, slim ball piece of shit keeps dragging things out and hanging it over my head that I’m usually fucking scrapping the bottom of the middle class,” Matthew grunted, the mounting anger over the past day hitting him hard. “The fucking Seed family. FUCK!”

“I hear ya, kid. I hear ya… you wanna do something about it?” Dutch asked, smirk gracing his face.

“What do you mean?”

“Kid, things have gone to hell. No law enforcement, no real laws. You wanna shoot some motherfuckers and help us take our home back, stickin’ it to those fuckin’ Seeds? Well, the bad ones anyway.”

“... Hell yeah.”

“Let’s get started, kid.”

* * *

Matthew felt less bad about shooting and killing the peggies once he had gotten outside and saw that they had all rotted to the core like his so-called family. Seeing those assholes poisoning the river and waterways with barrels of some kind of drug, beating people and killing them with iron symbols. If these people willingly hurt and killed other people and made life like this? Sure, part of him would regret it, but mostly he was glad to be making Hope county a better place one dead peggie at a time.

Liberating Dutch’s little island did not feel too hard, but he had seen Dutch’s map. Dutch’s island was a drop in a lake compared to the little island.

“ _You see the tower, kid?_ ”

“Yep.”

“ _You’re not afraid of heights, are you kid?_ ”

“No sir,” He groaned as he looked up at the tower.

He was not afraid of heights. Maybe climbing up high and falling to his death, but not the actual height itself. Still, there were ladders and he climbed up easily enough, reaching to the top and throwing the switch before promptly sitting down to stop feeling the sway of his shaking legs and the wind pushing against him.

“ _Alright, to the North you’ve got the Whitetail mountains. It’s run by Jacob Seed--_ ”

Matthew winced.

“ _The uh… you know. Oldest brother of the fuckin’ of that family. Jacob’s the one training the cult-- and he’s damn good at what he does. Eli and the Whitetail Militia have been trying to hold out, but Jacob’s ready to step on their necks._ ”

Matthew had no comment, just wondered if Dutch would mind if he stayed away from that area for a time… or for last. He really did not have the strength to face Jacob right now and just the thought of seeing him commit atrocities made his stomach burn and something cold burn like unholy frostbite inside his chest.

“ _Southeast of there you got the Henbane River. That’s Faith’s territory-- the little ‘sister’. I’ve heard all sorts of stories about people losing their minds in a place called ‘The Bliss’._ ”

Little sister, so she was adopted? Still, gave Matthew mixed feelings. Mostly he hoped that this Faith had not been a rather pathetic attempt to replace him when they started this.

“ _West is the Holland Valley. John Seed’s just rolled in there and is taking everything in the name of the cult-- food, supplies… and worst of all people._ ”

Fucking John… he could do that first. He had a lot of hate and rage aimed at Johnny for the past few years. Pissing him off would just be a good day in Matthew’s book.

“ _Fog should be clearing soon, which means we can get you off this island. Sit tight, shouldn’t be much longer._ ”

Matthew decided to stay on the tower until then, he was too tired to go down and possibly deal with more peggies, though he was hopeful that there was none now. But he had shit luck, it was best not to test it. So he sat down and marveled at the beauty of Hope county for a bit, watching the fog roll-on by beneath him. Things were… so different…

“ _Oh shit… kid, I’m pickin’ up something new outta Holland Valley. It’s a broadcast from John… you need to see this…_ ”

Frowning, Matthew took out his phone, flipping around any channels that it could pick up before finally finding a picture of John. He swallowed as he let it play, seeing the image of his youngest brother-in-law before he turned around to address the screen. It was sickening to see him try and emulate Joseph so much, hair and beard and even a neat little bun and even a pair of sunglasses on his head. Also sickening to see a peek of a red and irritated scar on his chest, likely also marking his skin with the sins like Joseph.

“ _We are all sinners. Every one of us,_ ” John said. “ _You. Me. Even The Father knows deeply of sin. It’s a poison that clouds our minds. What if I told you, you could be free from sin? What if I told you that everything you ever dreamed could come true? What if I told you that everything could be overcome if you embraced an idea… that freedom from from sin--”_

Matthew’s teeth came together when he saw Hudson in the background, hands bound and mouth duct taped shut.

“-- _Can come from the power of just one word…_ ”

John gestured to a sign above his head that said ‘yes’ as an unseen crowd yelled it joyfully. Hudson was shown being moved closer and Matthew felt his insides slither with agitation and mounting rage.

“ _Yes I am a sinner. Yes I wish to be unburdened. Yes…_ ” John took Hudson, putting his head at her throat as fresh tears rolled down her face as she tried to get away from the touch. “ _I must be redeemed. If you’re watching this, know that you have been selected._ ”

John thankfully moved away from Hudson, turning to address the screen again.

“ _You will be cleansed. You will confess your sins, and you will be offered atonement. Don’t worry you don’t have to do anything. We’ll come for you… Welcome to Eden’s Gate._ ”

The broadcast shut off and it left Matthew shaking as he sat on the tower and thought of nothing but shoving a knife through John’s smug face.

“ _Fuck, John Seed’s got your partner Hudson. She’s in a world of shit, kid. You’ve gotta get goin’!_ ”

No shit, Matthew thought bitterly to himself as he carefully rose and walked over to the zipline.

* * *

The first of many things on Matthew’s growing list of things to do to fight his so-called family, was get the town of Fall’s End liberated. Well, maybe it was not the first, but it was personal, so he made it first. Lot of fond memories there, waiting tables and making friends after a really bad time in his life. Only seemed right to get the town back under local control.

That meant a fire fight with the cult with a rifle that he had found, and a half dozen grenades and molotovs to make the fight zesty.

Mostly the rifle though, putting half a dozen bullets into the first few people that he found as he came marching into town. Must have looked a sight. Scruffy blonde guy wearing a flannel shirt and pants, casual as could be, glaring murder at the cult as he came in shooting at every motherfucker wearing cult gear and pride. When bullets failed, he threw the grenades at them, sending cult bodies flying.

The plane was a surprise, but just showed that John had the air support. Thankfully the cult had outfitted a roof with a machine gun and the great flying beast of metal died of a thousand bullet holes, crashing just outside of town in a fiery heap. 

That just left Matthew to jump down and start finding people and untying them before the work of stripping the cult propaganda from the town and cleaning it up started. Something that Matthew eagerly lost himself in for a few hours, helping take down flags, boards, clean up corpses to haul out and scrubbing paint off walls. When it was dark, someone mentioned that Pastor Jerome wanted to see him at the Spread Eagle.

Sighing and already not looking forward to the conversation, Matthew made his way over there, seeing the ‘open soon’ sign on the door as he pushed it open, hearing Jerome’s familiar voice.

“He will wipe every tear from their eyes. There will be no more death, or mourning, or crying or pain.”

Matthew stepped in further, looking around and seeing Casey in the kitchen. He made a mental note to say hi to him when he got the chance, sweeping his eyes around and seeing Jerome walking around idly with the good book in one hand. He had a bullet proof vest on over his usual pastor garments that made him look surreal. The last time that Matthew had seen him had been his first few times in the church, years ago.

“For I know the plans that I have made for you’, declared the Lord. ‘Plans to prosper you and not harm you, plans to give you hope, and a future’.”

Jerome turned to see him, smiling at him and going in a hand clasp. There was no recognition in his features as Matthew grasped his hand.

“I don’t claim to know God’ plans, but I know a good thing when I see it. You’re getting quite the reputation Deputy--”

“Do you remember me, Jerome?” Matthew blurted out.

“I... “ Jerome frowned. “No… should I?”

“I…” Matthew swallowed. Like a Band-Aid. “My name is Matthew Seed.”

“Seed?” Jerome asked, now looking concerned. “Seed as in… Joseph, John, Jacob and Faith Seed?”

“Yes.”

“Wait, none of them have gotten married recently--”

“You’re right. Joseph isn’t married, John isn’t married, Faith isn’t married…” Matthew swallowed thickly. “Jacob is still married. Same person just… different first name.”

“Oh… oh!” Jerome said, eyes popping open in surprise. “You! Goodness gracious, look at you. You’ve changed.”

“Uh… yeah.”

“Both outside and inside, it would see,” Jerome hummed, looking him over. “Once a member of the Seed family, faithfully clinging to your husband… now gunning down their men and taking back everything that belongs to the good people here… you’re the best thing that has happened to this place in a long time, Matthew.”

“A little help?”

They both turned around and saw someone with one too many boxes trying to walk down the stairs. 

“Are you trying to break your neck?” Jerome scolded softly, going over and taking a box from the person.

“Seemed like a good idea at the time…”

“‘Ere.”

“Thanks.”

Matthew stepped up and took another box from the pile, finding the person holding the stack behind it, who looked quite startled for a second before reclaiming herself.

“Oh shit. It’s you. Sorry, didn’t realize…” The woman said. Matthew realized that this must have been Mary May that Dutch spoke about. “All you’ve done, might as well add mover to the list, huh?”

They settled the boxes on the counter, hearing the telltale rattle of full bottles inside. Jerome looked them over, realizing this, turning to address her.

“I thought that Eden’s Gate confiscated all this.”

“The hell kinda Fairgrave would I be if I didn’t have a hidden stash?”

Jerome took a bottle out to look it over, chuckling. Mary came over to look at the box that Matthew had taken from her, at a picture of what looked like her and her father. He remembered the old bastard, who used to be his old boss. The one that had taken a look at his younger red eyed and freshly scarred self and said that he would be happy to help when Matthew had shakingly handed him an application to wait tables and serve drinks.

“Learned from the best…” Mary sighed, taking up the picture and walking away.

“This town… has been through a lot, deputy. We owe you thanks, but…”

“I know you’re lookin’ for your people,” Mary interrupted, coming over with three metal cups. “But the truth is you ain’t the only one in need of help. Pastor and I can only do so much…”

Said Pastor was opening a bottle and filling the cups. Matthew was pretty sure that God would be forgiving just this once, all things considering.

“If you can see about lending a hand, we’ll be sure to return the favor. Whaddya say?”

They each took a cup and one was passed onto him.

“Cheers,” He said, before slamming it with them. Strong stuff, burned his throat on the way down.

“Mary will get you squared away,” Jerome said, taking up his bible again. “When you get the chance, come by the Church. I’ll be there.”

He nodded, watching the Pastor walk to the door. He paused on the threshold, before turning back.

“Hey, Mary? Remember that really nice waiter that your daddy trusted to watch over you when you sat in here waiting for his shift to end when you was little?” Jerome asked.

“Yeah?” Mary hummed.

“Well, say hi to the man,” Jerome said, gesturing to Matthew, leaving with a smirk and Matthew sighing playfully.

“Wait, you? Well hot damn, sir, how have you been?” Mary May beamed as she filled up their cups again. “Should have recognized you right away. No one had scars like you did, though I suppose they healed by now, huh?”

“Yeah, some did.”

“Did you ever get away from that husband of yours?” Mary asked.

“... No.”

“Jesus, sorry.”

“Yeah…” Matthew sighed, taking up his cup again. “Me too.”


	3. Wash me in the Waters

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> WARNING: Mentioned past M!Deputy/Jacob Seed, canon typical elements (violence, gun violence, attempted drowning, attempted drug overdose, gore and violence, religious abuse/brainwashing), mentioned violent drunks, mentioned extremely poor mental health, implied PTSD, brief crude humor

Matthew did a few things around town for a few days to help the growing resistance out. Got back Mary May’s dad’s big rig from the peggies, burned a few silos down, destroyed a few trucks, freed a few people. Little things. He even took out an outpost, though admittedly that was a sloppy gunfight that ended with a lot of dead peggies after they had set off the alarms.

When he was not fighting, he was in Fall’s End. Usually he was sleeping in the church or miserably sipping whiskey at the Spread Eagle. Mary teased that he was becoming an old war vet too soon, but he was usually in no mood to indulge her. He was so tired and he could feel something turning to stone in his soul as he became numb to the extreme acts of violence and killing.

It almost became mundane.

Jerome tried to get him to feel better by reading some verses to him, only for him to admit to the man that he had become atheist since he had left Hope county.

“What? Seriously?” Jerome asked as they sat off to the side and backs against a wall. Why have pews when they could fit sleeping bags there? Why have pews when you could break them down to fix barricades and walls and make fires because the cult cut the electricity. God would understand, he had too.

“Yep,” He said.

“But I remember. You were here every Sunday, rain or shine, Seed brothers or not,” Jerome said.

“Yep.”

“... They really hurt you, that it killed the faith in you?” Jerome muttered quietly.

“Yep… it’s really hard to want to believe in a God when you have a husband that seems to hate being in the same building as you. When you’re alone in a hospital room for so long and the family that swears up and down that they love you leave you there,” Matthew sighed. “I just… I didn’t want to believe that there was a God if what had happened to me was all part of his plan. I didn’t want to believe in a sadist that watched me suffer for nothing.”

“... I understand.”

And that was the end of that. Apparently the cult had made a lot of people lose faith and Jerome had learned to take it in stride, because there was no way to make people that had been religiously abused by the cult believe in God again any time soon. Matthew was just another casualty in that way, just unseen because he had not been home in a long time. Though admittedly when Jerome read from the good book to others, it was still nice to listen too. The Seeds had not taken that from him at least.

It was about a week later of causing chaos in John’s territory, that the radio that Matthew had started carrying with him buzzed. The resistance had used it to page him when he was out and about to lead him towards silos, trucks, trapped people and troubling outposts. Everyone knew the frequency that he parked his radio on at this point, so if his radio started crackling, he knew it was someone wanting to talk to him specifically.

“Matthew here,” He said as he pressed the talk button. 

He was walking down a road, hoping to enjoy just a moment of peace as he made his way towards where the resistance had tracked down a few captured people that were meant to be shipped out to Faith for ‘rehabilitation’ under the Bliss. The hot Montana sun beat down on him, causing sweat to soak through his shirt and run down his face, as he casually walked with his rifle slung over his shoulder.

“ _Brother._ ”

“Fucking… hi John,” He groaned.

“ _You have been… busy._ ”

“Yep, fucking up your shit is a lot more fun than I thought it would be,” Matthew said.

“ _Your head has been filled with lies about us, brother. The so-called resistance has poured poison into your ear and set you upon your family. They are using you, brother._ ”

“Ya don’t say, John,” Matthew drawled sarcastically.

“ _Yes, they are. They want you to wallow in your own sins, to fall into depravity and corruption and greed. They want to drag you to hell with them, because they know they cannot be saved and wish to drag poor innocents with them. But they can be saved, and so can you._ ”

“Uh huh.”

“ _But first, you must be cleansed of all your sins. You must be baptized in the holy waters of our Father. You must be washed of the filth in your mind and in your soul._ ”

“This uh… gotta point, John boy? Because I’m currently on my way to shoot more of your men and I would really hate to be late because I got stuck listenin’ to you preach.”

There was a tinny chuckle over the radio.

“ _Do try to not fight the effects of the Bliss bullets. I hear that it can tax the body for days afterwards if you try to remain conscious._ ”

“... Johnny, what the fuck is a ‘Bliss bullet’.”

Suddenly his radio came to life with not the sound of John’s voice, but the sound of shouting faithful. Turning to look, Matthew saw a truck with faithful coming barreling towards him. Swearing loudly, Matthew turned, took aim and shot the driver, giving him half a moment as they fought to regain control over their truck to make a break for some wooden area up ahead. He could still hear the shouting as he made a break for the trees at breakneck speed. They were shouting about ‘just one Bliss bullet’ that had fear boiling in Matthew’s stomach. 

He made it to the trees, picking the sturdiest one and climbing up, adrenaline making him scale the damned thing with impressive speed, taking shelter within the leaves. Once he was hidden, he went ahead and turned his radio off. No point in giving them any chance of finding him. If they wanted him, they had to work for it.

He sat on a branch, looking down and waiting for the faithful to walk through the trees below him. Part of him was tempted to start throwing some of the fun tossables that he had started acquiring over the past week. Knives, grenades, smoke bombs, molotovs, all which could have easily cleared them out, but all of them had radios and there was no way for him to kill them all in one go and minimize the risk of reinforcements. Faithful, he could handle. A plane on his lonesome, not so much. He had to wait for them to pass before finding some place to lay low, hope that John got busy with other things.

He waited a few hours, feeling his ass and legs go numb from trying to be as small as possible in the leaves, watching the faithful hunt around the area beneath him diligently, before yelling that ‘he must have moved on!’ and getting in their truck and rolling out.

As if his life could not get any worse…

He managed to get down to the tree, hitting the ground and turning on his radio again and calling Fall’s End.

“I don’t know who can hear me but it’s Matthew. John’s people are hunting me down, I--”

He paused and muttered a swear.

On the road, teary eyed and wearing the stained clothing of the cult, a woman was holding a gun aimed at him.

“ _Matthew? Matthew? Deputy, if you can hear me, you need to run to another territory! Jacob and Faith won’t let John hunt in their territory. Deputy? Answer me, dammit!_ ”

“I’m sorry,” The woman whimpered before shooting.

What hit Matthew was not a bullet, he knew that much. When he looked down, he saw that whatever had hit him had left a splotch of green on his shirt along with a red spot. As the woman called for the faithful over her radio, he lifted up his shirt to see the bloodied spot on his lower side, touching it and already knocking whatever it was that hit him off. He bent down and picked it up, seeing the shattered head and the metal base. Whatever it was, hit his skin hard enough to break it and then dumped a payload inside his bloodstream without seriously harming him.

“Wait… why aren’t you unconscious?”

Unconscious? No. Suddenly and terrifyingly enraged? Yes.

Taking out his knife, Matthew stalked over to the woman as his vision went red with sudden and violent rage. She remained rooted to the spot as Matthew grabbed the front of her shirt and then repeatedly stabbed her until she stopped screaming and twitching. She dropped to the ground in a gory heap, leaving a panting and gore streaked Matthew and a new truckful of faithful.

“What the fuck, why didn’t the Bliss bullet work?” One shouted.

Still panting, Matthew started towards the truck with his knife still in hand and a sickening need to be violent drowning his rational thoughts in a sea of gore behind his eyes. The faithful screamed and then gargled as his knife met them. 

Red on his hands, red on his face, red on his knife, red on the road, red in his head. Red, red, red, until they were all dead. Red like roses, red like strawberry jam, red like the scars on Jacob’s arms and face when his red blood rushed underneath the skin, red like his own blood on the highway street when he had pulled himself from his destroyed car and laid there in agony and lacerated dozens of times over by glass. Red like--

A faithful must have come up behind him and just clubbed him, because one moment he was painting the road red, so very fucking red, and the next something was cracking against the back of his head. Stars danced across Matthew’s vision of complete red, red that darkened into black as Matthew passed out and collapsed to a familiar and strange bloodied road.

* * *

When Matthew woke up, it was because his legs touched water. He lurched, finding himself held up by two people with his arms over their shoulders, blearily looking around and finding several terrified people with a faithful standing with them in the water. He slurred out a questioning noise, managing to get his feet underneath of him, awkwardly fumbling his way through the water as he was lead in, further until--

“Johnny?” Matthew slurred out, looking at his brother-in-law standing in the water, the picture of a casual Baptist.

“Hello brother… kindly give him here and I will take over, thank you.”

The two men carrying him eased him into John’s waiting hands, John having to support him for a moment before he found his legs and he was just staring at him.

“Now, brother. I will wash away your sins in these blessed waters, and then take you to confession what was washed away here, understand?” John said, quiet and soft even as the people around them sob and whimpered in fear.

“Wait… Johnny… I think I’m concussed, I need a doctor…”

“Soon, brother. For now, take a deep breath in,” John said, putting one hand behind Matthew’s head. Matthew hissed as a finger brushed along the spot where he must have gotten hit with something, the hand moving down just a little, and one hand pressed against the center of his chest.

“We must wash away our past. We must expose our sins,” John said, loud enough to reach the group as he started dipping Matthew’s body back. Matthew’s head hurt too much to protest, though he grabbed John’s wrist hard enough to bruise as one hand scrambled to grab something else on his sick and twisted brother-in-law for an anchor, his fingers finding Johnny’s vest. “We must atone…”

John dipped him into the water and Matthew almost sucked in water in shock because of how fucking cold the river water was. Before he shut his eyes, sparks appeared on the edges of his vision and agitation and anger started to slowly but surely bubble in his gut. He gripped Johnny’s vest harder and his wrist harder as he started to thrash as the edges of his lungs started to burn from lack of air.

“For only then may we stand in the light of God and walk through his Gate unto Eden.”

Matthew heard him even through the water, glaring up at him as he started to thrash harder. John must have taken pity on him, lifting him up and out of the cold depths to let him take in a sweet and much needed breath of air and start breathing raggedly to chase the burn out of his lungs. The others were getting lead out of the water and towards vans. But John still had a grip on him, was smiling at him in a dangerous way, eyes hard and unforgiving.

“Johnny… n--”

John pushed him back into the water. He had no time to suck a breath in, so the burn in his lungs set in quicker as he thrashed and fought against John’s grip, motor functions coming back to him as panic and his strange mounting rage started to fill him up. His nails bit into John’s wrist and he yanked on the man’s clothing, kicking his legs and throwing water everywhere.

John pulled him out of the water, hushing before he could start screaming at the bastard.

“You are not clean just yet.”

“Fucking piece of shit--” Matthew snapped as John pushed him towards the water again.

“Do you mock the cleansing, John?”

John suddenly looked like a kid with their hand caught in the cookie jar, guilty lifting Matthew up and allowing him to look past John to see Joseph standing in the headlights of a van. Matthew never would have been glad to see Joseph, but he suddenly was grateful if only because it saved him another dosing and John’s apparently sadism pointed at him.

“No, Joseph,” John muttered quietly.

“You have to love them, John. Do not let your sin prevent that.”

John looked torn between guilt and childish anger at being scolded. Matthew really wanted out of his hands, throwing pleading looks at Joseph. Joseph gave him a ‘poor thing’ look.

“Bring our brother to me,” He ordered gently.

Matthew let go of John, red dripping from his wrist as Matthew sloshed through the water with a faithful guiding him, towards Joseph’s outstretched hands. Those hands cupped his face and brought him in, closer to Joseph’s face. He was still wearing those glasses. Matthew almost felt the need to playfully scold him for having sunglasses on at night, but now that he was out of the water, his teeth were chattering too hard to talk. Joseph’s hands were so warm against his freezing skin.

“Despite all that you have done, brother, you are not beyond salvation,” Joseph said quietly. Like he was disappointed because he knew Matthew could do better. His thumbs gently rubbed soothing circles into the corners of Matthew’s jaw. “You are not here by accident or by chance, brother. You are here by the grace of God. You’ve been given a gift.”

The hands on Matthew’s jaw tightened briefly and anger passed over Joseph’s features. Fear bubbled in Matthew’s gut. He had never seen Joseph angry before.

“Now, it remains to be seen whether you choose to embrace it…” Joseph sighed quietly and looked very sad. Like his next thought was so depressing that it just destroyed him. “Or cast it aside.”

Joseph gently let his face go and he did not miss the warmth, just sluggishly looked to the side to see John joining them. Joseph drew him close, putting a hand on his shoulder.

“Our brother shall reach the Atonement. Or the Gates shall be shut to you John.”

Joseph pulled his brother’s head to his forehead. Matthew had seen it so many times in the past, the gentle and affectionate touch between the brothers. Once it brought him peace. Now, standing in poisoned water and having almost been drowned by his so called brother, it brought only dread.

“Yes, Joseph.”

Joseph let his brother go and walked off without a goodbye. John watched him go, before turning his burning gaze to Matthew.

“You will confess. Every sin you’ve ever committed, brother dearest,” John said calmly but with a firm tone. Like he was going to reach into Matthew himself and rip each sin out, bleeding and screaming. “No matter how petty, no matter how small… I will pull from you. Then we’ll see if you’re worthy of Atonement.”

Matthew had one drop of fight in him.

“Does that include everything I’ve ever done to your brother? Because me and Jake used to sin all the damn time, Johnny,” Matthew slurred out tiredly.

“Cute,” John drawled out, bitter and sarcastic, making a motion towards a faithful. A man got his hands underneath Matthew's armpits and started forcibly moving him towards a van.

“I certainly thought so,” Matthew breathed before losing consciousness again.

* * *

The good Pastor busted him out by attacking the train of vans heading towards wherever John wanted to take them. His van crashed and he ended up crawling out of the smoking wreckage, shaking like a leaf because really bad memories were surfacing, to Jerome waiting for him. His hands got unbound and almost immediately the faithful descended on them like a goddamn insect swarm, coming from the gates just ahead. Matthew went back into the van to take the rifle of the faithful that had been riding with them, coming out and getting to work killing the motherfuckers. When he ran out of faithful to kill at the gates, he advanced, killing faithful along the road that must have led to John’s bunker if Matthew had any guess, making sure to pull people out of vans and untie people laying in the road waiting for help.

“They seriously have a mortar?!” He breathed harshly as he watched hellfire rain down on the wreckage of the road and path ahead. Helpful green flares had been set out by someone where he could dodge the raining fire and lead, but it still did not help Matthew’s mounting anger and rage. 

Mostly at John because of fucking course John had both planes and mortars. And the fact that his brother had attempted to drown him after preaching back and forth about wanting to ‘save Matthew’ and ‘no hair would be harmed on his head’. His so called family must have been a sick and twisted fuck up mess by now if they thought almost drowning him in a fucked up drug fueled bapatism was for his own good and did him no harm.

“ **I FUCKING HATE THE SEEDS** ,” Was Matthew’s war cry as he ran from each ‘safe’ place between bursts of motar fire before making it making it to the top and breaking the neck of the motherfucker operating it.

Got the man up and proceeded to use their own weapons against them until the chopper showed up and whisked them away, taking them a safe distance out before touching down and letting Matthew crawl out and sprawl on the ground.

“ _Hey deputy, the last few hours have been rough, want to head back for a bit?_ ” Jerome buzzed on his radio.

“... yeah…”

He willed his tired body up and then trekked out for a bit until he found a four wheeler. Breaking pretty much every speed limit there, Matthew pulled into Fall’s End not long after the first bits of sun started to shine over everything. He trudged over to the church, muttering a greeting to Jerome before falling onto a sleeping bag and promptly passing out.

When he woke up, he found Jerome sitting by his head.

“Afternoon, hero,” Jerome chuckled softly as he croaked.

“Afternoon?”

“Yes, it’s about four in the evening right now. You’ve been asleep about twelve hours,” Jerome hummed, holding the good book in his hands, reading some part of it. “To be expected. We found a pretty bad bruise on the back of your head, and you reek of Bliss.”

“... For something called Bliss, it sure pisses me off,” Matthew croaked, gingerly sitting up and feeling all sorts of aches and bruises throb all over his body. He might have been wrong about being concussed, but everything else wrong with him checked out.

“Easy now, easy. When you can stand, Mary has the essentials of making you feel alive again,” Jerome said, putting a hand on Matthew’s shoulder when he attempted to stand too soon.

When he could stand, Matthew made his way over to the Spread Eagle to find that Mary had a curtained off area out back where a warm iron tub of water was waiting, and a change of clothing.

“Figured that it’s the least we can do, you saved a bunch of people out there last night, Rook,” Mary said as he joyfully sank into warm water and just let it sooth his tired and aching body. “After this, it’s nothing special, but we got a hot plate of food and cold beer waiting.”

He honestly did feel better once he was clean, in clean clothing and quickly shuffling down hot food while sipping cold beer. Almost human, even for a moment.

“So… no special treatment from John, huh?” Mary asked, sitting at the counter next to him. People would understand if she was not up to ‘proper’ customer service etiquette by standing behind the counter. People had to understand that things were different.

“Nope,” He grumbled.

“You would think that your brother-in-law would care at least abou _you_ of all people,” Mary hummed.

“Who was it that you were married too? Joseph or Jacob? John’s too young.”

“Jacob.”

“Oh, right, the knife,” Mary hummed, looking down at the counter for a moment, before bumping Matthew’s elbow out of the way. Her fingers dragged along a gouge that Matthew, unfortunately, remembered. At least they had managed to get the blood out. “God, that was terrifyin’.”

Jacob had taken a man’s hand and pinned it to the counter with his hunting knife. Now, said hand had been gripping Matthew’s wrist, demanding he pour the man another drink despite being completely intoxicated. Matthew had known at that point that Jacob had a temper, that Jacob could, with disturbing ease, get violent and cause damage. But Jacob had never actually shown it to Matthew. Whenever he got angry, or any other ‘ugly’ emotion he never wanted Matthew to see, he left. So when Jacob came up out of nowhere, grabbed said hand and pinned it to the counter well…

“I had to get him out of here after that,” Matthew muttered, suddenly losing interest in his dinner.

“I never knew what happened after that… what happened, Matt?” Mary asked quietly.

“Your dad rushed you out of the room before you saw the blood. I rushed Jacob out while a few people called the paramedics and got the knife unstuck,” Matthew hummed as he recalled that bitter evening.

He had not seen Jacob in two months. And during that time he had almost died. Not a word, not a peep, not a sign, nothing. The first time that he had seen his husband in two months after a traumatic accident that nearly killed him and Jacob had to go and do that…

“Didja get him to leave?”

Matthew had taken him outside and Jacob had paused to look at him. Then gently he lifted one hand and touched the still tender side of Matthew’s newly scarred face and had asked ‘what happened’ and just… something broke. Matthew had an extremely loud breakdown right then and there. A big burly man had come to see what he was screeching and crying about, saw him hunched on the ground and hugging himself and Jacob standing over him. The gentleman had gently, but firmly told Jacob to take a hike with a shotgun aimed at Jacob’s head. Jacob had left and Matthew did not see him for years after that.

“Yeah.”

“... This shit’s hard on everyone, but I can’t even imagine what you’re going through, Matt,” Mary sighed softly.

“... No, you can’t.”

He left his unfinished dinner on the counter, along with his beer.

He left the bar and went looking for any trouble that could be solved with a shit ton of bullets.


	4. Red Bliss

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> WARNING: Canon typical elements (drug abuse and drug overdose, gore and violence, gun violence, religious abuse and brainwashing), briefly mentioned unsafe home environments, briefly mentioned emotionally distant spouses, implied depression/PTSD
> 
> The next chapter will backtrack and be from a new character perspective

“Are you afraid of heights, deputy?”

“Look, I’m not afraid of heights, but that doesn’t mean I have to be crazy about them,” Matthew said, keeping his eyes forward as he flew the plane. He was sitting rigidly and painfully in his seat. Nick was in the seat behind him, sometimes Matthew could hear him moving, probably leaning over to look out through the glass. “I am flying, remember?”

Below them was Hope county, pretty as ever if you did not look too close at the dark smears that were the dead bodies, the burning piles of bodies, the grisly and bloodied compounds or the green tinted rivers that ran thick with Bliss. God, this used to be Matthew’s home and it looked too much like someone with cancer trying to hide it but failing. Still there, still breathing, still clinging to life, but the sickness threatening to kill were poking through.

“Hey you are… and uh pretty damned well too. Who taught you?”

“Someone taught me the basics a long time ago and I took classes after I started in law enforcement. I thought it would make my application more desirable,” Matthew said.

He was really hoping that Nick did not ask who that person was. Right now, Matthew did not want to think about any fucking Seeds, let alone his asshole youngest brother-in-law. Right now he wanted to just not be in anyone’s territory and just not think and just move mechanically. Right now, Matthew wanted to fucking relax.

“So uh… I know you may not want to talk about them--”

Matthew groaned.

“Listen, stop me if you want but uh… were… were the Seeds always as shitty as they are now?” Nick asked behind him. “I mean… you were married to Jacob for a bit.”

“No, but there were warning signs that they were heading to a dark place,” Matthew sighed. “I really, really don’t want to talk about it, Nick. I understand that it may seem like I have all the Seed secrets, that it's divine karma and retribution by God’s hand himself that I’m here… but I just have shit luck. I had shit luck running into Jacob all those years ago, I’ve had shit luck trying to divorce myself from the family and it’s shit luck that I’m here now…”

“Sorry.”

“It’s okay.”

They touched down as it was getting dark, and perhaps a little guilty about touching a sore spot, Nick invited him into the house for dinner.

“Like half the goddam county doesn’t know that you eat nothing but shit you find in abandoned houses and whiskey,” Nick said when Matthew tried to protest.

“Not true… sometimes it's beer,” Matthew sighed as he trudged into the Rye house.

“Welcome back boys,” Kim said, standing in the kitchen and over a selection of things.

“Nu-uh, sit down Kimmy. Doctor wants you off your feet as much as possible,” Nick said as Matthew kicked his boots off just inside the door. “Besides that, you can’t cook.”

Matthew welcomed their playful bickering as he sat down on the couch, enjoying the simple comfort of being off his feet for a bit. Being in a house and being in a normal setting when the outside world only provided trauma, guns, killing and death. Here, for just a moment, he was safe and it felt like such a fucked up luxury.

“Excuse me, mister,” Kim sighed as she plopped herself down next to him on the couch, hands resting gently on her distended belly. Her and Nick’s daughter (though Nick was in denial about their kid being a girl), resting beneath flesh.

“You okay? I mean, you usually got it rough, but you look like shit,” Kim asked him as he heard Nick banging away in the kitchen. “You usually do, but more so than usual.”

“John tried to drown me.”

“Wait? You? Jesus, you would think of all the people in this county, that he wouldn’t try to drown you out of all of them,” Kim winced. “Um… what did the oldest dickhead think of that?”

“... I don’t know. Chances are that Johnny didn’t tell him because he’s a punk ass, and I’m still too much of a coward to talk to Jake,” Matthew sighed, putting his face in his hands and sighing again.

They settled into silence for a moment, relaxing and listening to Nick cooking in the other room. After a moment, Kim let out a gasp. Matthew lifted his head up to see her gently pressing her hands to the sides of her stomach. After a moment, she gasped again.

“Nick? Nick! She’s kicking again!” Kim yelled.

“Nick Jr is kicking?!”

Nick messed around for a moment, probably moving things to prevent fire hazards, before rushing out to his wife’s side. He bent down, eagerly putting his hands in Kim’s so that she could guide his hands to where he could feel the baby kicking. Matthew watched Nick’s face light up, probably feeling his miracle kicking away. After a moment, Nick reached over and grabbed one of Matthew’s hands, yanking it over and pressing where one of his hands were. Any half assed excuses died on his tongue when he felt that soft little bump underneath his hands and saw the two beaming parents grinning at him.

The baby stopped kicking after a few moments, settling down much to Kim’s relief. Nick went back to cooking dinner. He finished and they ate up. Nick and he washed the dishes and put them away. Before he could make his excuses, Nick started on this tangent about how he and Kim could not figure out the baby bed for the life of them and went on about it until Matthew agreed to help put it together. That ate up enough time until it was well and truly dark. Then the two were insistent on letting him stay the night. ‘The peggies will be there in the morning and there’s a lot of good people fighting out there, they can let you get some sleep’. He insisted on the couch regardless, listening to Kim and Nick move around their bedroom before settling down for the night.

It was well after Nick and Kim had turned in and he could hear someone sawing logs, that his radio buzzed. He quickly picked it up from where he had discarded it with his gear, turning down the volume before hitting the talk button.

“Matthew here.”

“... _I heard John tried to drown you._ ”

“... Yeah. I uh… I don’t think you need to be dunked three times for a baptism.”

“... _I’ll talk to him._ ”

“Okay.”

There was a silence where Matthew could hear his heart hammering away behind his ribs.

“You still have shit sleeping habits, Jake.”

“ _I know._ ”

* * *

Two days later and Matthew was bending down to cut the ties holding a man that he had just freed from a now very dead peggie. The other person had picked up the dead peggie’s gun and had already taken off, mentioning something about an outpost nearby that Matthew was hesitant to take on just yet.

“Thank you mister,” The man sighed as he got up and rubbed his wrists.

“Any time,” He replied tiredly.

“Hey, did you hear about Sharky? Heard he was up to something with them there angels,” The man said.

Matthew wrinkled up his nose before blinking.

“Sharky?”

“You know him?”

“Uh… used too… let me go see if I can help him…”

Sharky was indeed someone that Matthew used to know. Someone that Matthew used to be friends with and had even crashed on his couch and lived with him for a time after his previous temporary home started to feel hostile. One of the first two people that Matthew had come out as trans too as well and one of his first supports in coming out to everyone else. Matthew had tried to keep up with Sharky when he had left to pursue law enforcement, but he guessed now that Sharky did not fall out of contact with him, but instead his contact was harshly cut off by the Seeds.

Problem was that Sharky was in Faith’s territory. As loath as he was to just leave John be… he was still shaken by the almost drowning. He found himself capable of taking a lot, but there was just something about a man that claimed to love him so much trying his damnedest to drown him that just… shook Matthew. Besides that, Matthew was mildly interested in finding out more about this ‘little sister’ that his brother-in-laws and husband adopted into the family. So maybe it was time to give John some breathing room and start stepping on other necks for a bit.

“Hey, I’m going to head to Faith’s territory for a bit. Can you all hold down the fort?” He radioed in to Fall’s End as he found a car that he could use to drive to Faith’s little slice of hell. Dusty and the word ‘Sinner’ painted in harsh letters across the hood. But Matthew had tried to steal the church’s cars for stealth driving and he still alway got shot at, so as long as it started it would do.

“ _With all the work you’ve done, I believe so._ ” Jerome buzzed over the radio.

“ _You’ve given the resistance a lot of breathing room kid, I think they’ll manage,_ ” Dutch said over the radio.

“Alright, I’m heading out. If you need me, I’ll come driving a car like I stole it… chances are that I did,” Matthew said as he threw open the door to a musty cab. The keys were in the passenger seat, thankfully.

“ _Just a heads up kid, don’t trust anything in Faith’s territory. The brothers use torture and manipulation, but Faith uses Bliss to break people. Be careful around that shit, kid, it’ll make you see things that aren’t there and if you inhale enough of it, you’ll become a mindless Angel,_ ” Dutch said as Matthew started driving.

“... Hey Dutch, has anyone had… weird reactions to Bliss before?” Matthew asked as he drove, mindful of escaping people and peggies on the road. He had already almost been run over several times by both, no need a repeat of traumatic shit.

“ _How so, kid?_ ”

“Well, John sent his people out to get me and they shot me with a Bliss bullet. But I didn’t pass out like they seemed to think I should have. Instead I just… I started seeing red. I stabbed and gutted a bunch of peggies before someone cracked my head pretty hard,” Matthew explained.

“ _Shit kid… I know the Seeds are highly resistant to the stuff. I think that’s why they took in Faith like they did… not sure what to make of it kid, but if that’s the case, you might want to be extra careful around the shit. Look out for the green barrels and the barrels bearing the cult’s mark. Also the flower themselves, little drooping white things and plain, leafy stocks. Ya hear me?_ ”

“I hear you Dutch, over and out.”

John’s territory was country life, but Faith’s territory was more hardly touched countryside. More green, trees and rivers and such than John’s territory. He pulled his stolen car up to the edge of the territory and just left it, hoping that someone that needed it could use it. On foot, he started traveling inwards.

“ _Leaving so soon, brother?_ ” Matthew’s radio buzzed.

“Hey, how was your talk with Jake?” Matthew buzzed back.

There was an answering silence.

“ _Don’t be rude, John! He’s part of the family,_ ” A feminine voice answered instead.

“You must be Faith,” Matthew said as he walked, boots scuffing the ground in a lazy paze. He hated how familiarly bubbly and cute her voice sounded. Did not bode well for his ‘Faith was a replacement for the non-transitioned and closested him’ theory.

“ _Yep! It’s so nice to meet one of my family, I’ve heard so much about you,_ ” Faith said.

“And I know nothing about you. How about we chat? We are in-laws now, after all.”

“ _I would love too! But not right now, I’m busy attending to my precious Angels._ ”

Grunting, Matthew changed channels.

“Dutch, where’s the resistance?”

“ _Hope county jail._ ”

Matthew took off, boots beating the dirt as he took out his rifle and started shooting a righteous path towards the jail.

* * *

The jail was about as much of the same as everything else that had happened in Hope county for Matthew so far. Which meant a lot of guns, a lot of bullets, some tossed explosives and a lot of dead peggies laying on the concrete after everything was said and done. Honestly, it was all a bit of a blur of sensations and noises that Matthew was numb too. Evening running past sheriff Whitehorse a few times did not register until the guns stopped barking, even then, Matthew just tiredly greeted the man before someone barked at him to help lift a shot man into the makeshift infirmary inside.

After that there was just too much work to do. Getting the gates fixed, hauling bodies out and out of the way, getting people patched up and picking up all the peggie guns to restock the jail. No time to think, let alone breath, until evening when Matthew found himself sitting on a cot and nodding off.

“Seed.”

Matthew flinched, looking up to meet the sheriff’s tired eyes.

“Do you think it’s wise to call me that, here?” Matthew asked.

“Everyone knows, don’t worry,” Whitehorse said as he sat on the cot next to Matthew. “Everyone is talking about deputy Matthew Seed causing terror in John’s territory. The ‘good’ Seed out of the bad ones. Tales from the resistance travel far and wide, Seed. People know you’re a good man.”

Matthew just breathed out. Not sure how he felt about that. He did not want to redeem the ‘Seed’ family name, he wanted to get rid of it entirely. Looked like the only way to do that now was just killing Seeds...

“We heard… about what happened with John.”

“Yeah.”

“We also heard that apparently John and Jacob had a rather… _heated_ discussion over the radio for well over an hour. Could not break through to the private ‘Seed only’ channel for more than a few seconds at a time, but it sounded like Jacob was none too pleased with his youngest brother,” Whitehorse went on further, though not looking entirely pleased with the information.

“You get anything of what was said? I wouldn’t mind hearing John got called a dumbass motherfucker, but that’s just me.”

“Not quite those words, but those listenin’ in heard Jacob refer to John as ‘weak’ and what he did ‘snake like’. And well… not sure how well you know your husband now, but that is a cutting insult coming from him,” Whitehorse chuckled dryly. “It’s apparently led to quite a division between people loyal to Jacob and people loyal to John. There was some talk about getting Joseph involved before we lost the signal.”

“Good to hear I’m causing problems even without being there.”

“You’ve given the Whitetails and the Fall’s End resistance some breathing room at least, with John and Jacob’s people fighting and bickering. Wouldn’t mind you giving the Cougars the same courtesy,” Whitehorse said. “Already got some places that could use the ‘Matthew Seed’ touch.”

“... Okay.”

* * *

Matthew decided that he hated Faith’s region.

The Bliss that seemed to run thick in the air, water and people made the edges of his vision go red and remain there. Anger always simmered in his belly and he got sloppy in his fights. Instead of trying to quietly take everyone out, he found himself favoring large weapons and explosives, whatever was loudest and most violent. He found himself taking out whatever blunt objects he started carrying around to murder people caveman style. Baseball bats, shovels, sticks, pipes, a pair of brass knuckles that he found, beating people to gory demises.

Apparently, where it took absolutely massive doses to experience any effects with Bliss with the Seed family, with Matthew… with Matthew any effects were instead reversed from normal symptoms. Instead of listlessness, calm, euphoria, complacency to suggestions and otherwise calm and neutral effects that it normally had, instead made Matthew aggressive, prone to extreme bouts of rage, quick to anger and quicker to extreme acts of violence. And given how utterly saturated that Faith’s territory was in the stuff, well… bloodbaths followed wherever Matthew went.

Eventually someone had to notice that the Bliss was having an adverse effect on Matthew, because after walking down a road, sticky with gore from slaughtering an outpost with nothing but a shovel and a knife, his radio buzzed again.

“This better be fucking good!” Matthew snarled into the radio, the edges of his vision still so fucking red and he was getting so fucking sick of the color red.

“ _It is, brother, you need not--_ ”

“Shove a six foot cactus up your fucking ass and choke on it, Joseph!” Matthew yelled into his radio.

Every little noise was setting him off and agitation and rage flowed through him like blood. He was not thinking clearly, everything was so fucking red and he hated every second of it with enough fury and hatred to make him sick to his stomach. He just wanted everything to just fucking stop. He wanted everything to stop being so fucking red.

“ _Don’t use a Bliss bullet. Matthew is having very odd reactions with Bliss. Use a tranquilizer or knock him unconscious. Bring him back to me, it’s dangerous to have him in Faith’s territory for now. I will safely move him out to Jacob’s territory when we get him here._ ”

“ _I am proud of you, trying to make peace with Jacob._ ”

“ _He’ll only make peace if Matthew shows up unharmed._ ”

“ _He will. Faith, I would like your presence at my home where I will keep Matthew. I do need help getting information out of this stubborn heretic that I found._ ”

“ _Yes, John!_ ”

“... What are you stupid, sadistic fucks fucking talking about?” Matthew asked.

“YOU HEARD THE BAPTIST! USE A TRANQUILIZER!”

Another hunting party. But Matthew was not thinking clearly. Instead of running and hiding as a smart man would have done, Matthew instead snarled as he took out his knife and bent low to face the approaching party, coming in on four wheelers. He would fucking slaughter them all--

A sharp pain exploded in his thigh. He yelled in pain as he looked down to see the arrow sticking out of his leg. He yanked it out, seeing the newly hollowed glass vial just underneath the head. There was once a liquid inside, and now it was inside of Matthew. And some part of his still beating red mind thought that the anger would burn through whatever that they had just injected him with. And as he threw the arrow aside and took up his knife again and faced down the faithful surrounding him, it felt like it.

Three faithful dead, however, and Matthew could feel the edges of his consciousness slipping into darkness and the rest crumbling and following suit. Four faithful dead and the edges of his vision were black instead of red. Five faithful dead and half his vision was gone and his limbs were numb and heavy. Six faithful dead and he was forced to his knees and unable to move.

Six faithful dead and Matthew was unconscious.

* * *

“John, I’m serious. If I come by and there’s a single hair on his head out of place…”

“Don’t worry, brother. I will admit, I let my sin take over at the river. That will not happen again. I look forward to seeing you again.”

* * *

Matthew woke up tied in a chair in what looked like someone’s bedroom. Large bed, wardrobe, a framed law degree on the wall--

Oh no.

Matthew still felt achingly numb, hollowed out and tired. He could only manage to weakly squirm against where his hands were tied to the arms of the chair before he got too painfully tired and had to stop. Blinking was a sweat inducing effort and breathing was slightly painful from how hard his lungs were working. Whatever they had injected into him certainly did the trick. Whatever it was had effectively made it impossible to escape, so he had to just sit tight and hope that a chance to get away showed itself.

What had the nut cases said before? That John was handing him over to Jacob because it was too dangerous for him in Faith’s territory. For once, he agreed with his piece of shit youngest brother-in-law. He hoped to never see any fucking Bliss ever again--

“Hello?”

Matthew managed to lift his head off his collarbone, looking at the young woman that entered the room. She wore soft white and looked as church approved as could be. Flowers decorated the hem of her dress as she walked in.

“You must be the man John wants me to talk too. It’s very nice to meet you, my name is Faith Seed.”

Faith Seed… oh no. Oh fuck. Oh god oh god oh god oh god--

Matthew slurred something out, too numb to form proper words. But Faith hushed him, gently pressing two neatly manicured fingers to his lips. She smelled of something that was getting something in the pit of his stomach burning.

“Don’t worry, I’m not here to hurt you. I just need you… more complacent to my brother’s questions,” Faith smiled. She let her hand drop and brush against her skirt, green dust drifting to the floor for a second before she brought her hand up to her mouth and gave a gentle blow. Green dust hit Matthew’s face and he breathed it in. That fire in his stomach suddenly got stronger and the edges of his vision sharpened intensely and started to turn red.

“Are you feeling more chatty now?” Faith asked with a sickeningly sweet smile.

When Matthew did nothing but stare and shake with quickly mounting rage in his chair, she frowned. She dusted her hand against her skirt again and again blew Bliss into Matthew’s face. He managed to cough, trying to spit the bitter taste in his mouth out as the edges of his vision turned crimson and he regained the ability to thrash in his chair and against his bonds. He blinked to try and clear something up, only getting Faith’s quizzical face closer to his.

“You’re stubborn, but that’s okay! Stubborn people don’t stay like that in my care. You’ll be an Angel soon, and soon you’ll give that information to John,” Faith smiled at him.

Another bout of Bliss dust and he regained the ability to start snarling and violently started fighting against his bonds. Rope bit into his wrists and started shredding the skin as he kept trying to get free.

“I… don’t understand--”

“Faith!” John yelled as he pushed open the door. Fear saturated his features as he looked at Matthew, struggling to get free and snarling as his vision turned all red. “That’s Matthew! What have you done?!”

“Wait, but you said he--”

With a final push, Matthew managed to snap the ropes holding his wrists in place. The ones holding his ankles followed half a second later.

With a snarl, he turned his burning gaze towards Faith and John Seed.


	5. Behind Wolf's Teeth pt1

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> WARNING: Mentioned past M!Deputy/Jacob Seed, canon typical elements (religious brainwashing and abuse, drug usage and abuse, violence, mentioned attempted drownings, blood and gore), unhealthy fixations on past relationships, unhealthy viewings of past relationships
> 
> Part one of two about things from Jacob's perspective, just wanted to explain a few things and have a 'clearer' point of view for what happens next

Another Sunday, another sermon at church. Joseph’s church.

Jacob was sitting to the side, trying to appear interested when he was more focused on thinking about the new shipment of wolves to be made into Judges. They needed to be starved and trained to make them his strong killers…

He glanced outside and saw the beautiful cloudless sky outside. A fine day to waste inside a hot and stuffy church while Joseph preached about visions and Eden. He would rather have been outside, he never was one for church, thought he hardly missed a day. He was always getting dragged to church by other people.

At least when Matthew dragged him to Sunday church service, it was cute. Nothing was cuter than sitting in an uncomfortable pew, Matthew pressed hip to hip with him, holding onto one of his arms and singing along with the choir. Nothing was cuter than Matthew puffing up his cheeks and telling him to stop laughing at his terrible singing. It was never terrible, and he was never laughing…

Joseph concluded services, reminding everyone that events would soon unfold and to be prepared for the Collapse and to go to Eden soon. Jacob barely resisted rolling his eyes, deciding that that was his cue to leave as Joseph trailed off into an unprompted tangent about his visions of Eden and what was to come. Jacob just sighed and walked outside, getting some of that Montana sun as he picked a spot outside away from most anyone and took out his knife. It was dull, too many cullings, too many Whitetails. He took his whetstone out of his pocket and started sharpening his knife, before there would be many more cullings and many more Whitetails coming.

“Jacob.”

Jacob lifted his eyes, finding his brother standing nearby. He was smiling just a bit, but then again, given how the past couple of years work was coming to fruition, it was hard for him to not be happy. Jacob, less so, but at least something was happening.

“Joseph,” Jacob grunted out.

“Is something wrong? You left earlier than usual,” Joseph said, voice light and unaccuatory.

“I know your visions of the future, Joseph, I don’t need to keep hearing them,” Jacob shrugged casually.

“I understand. Hearing the same thing over and over again can be quite uninteresting, and you always hate someone repeating themself. Though… you probably are still interested in my visions of _him_ , aren’t you?” Joseph said, smiling when Jacob snapped to attention and snapped his head to Joseph. 

He caught himself, sniffing dismissively when Joseph chuckled, before turning back to drag the whetstone along his knife’s edge.

But his hands were shaking.

“He is coming, right?” Jacob asked.

“Yes. When they come to try and take me, he will be with them.”

Jacob remembered pale blond hair and brown eyes and a smile that told him that someone was happy to see him come home after years of people sneering at his mere existence. 

He also remembered tired eyes that had stayed up too many sleepless nights wanting him to finally come home and only meeting him with a tired and ragged ‘oh, you finally showed up’ when he finally did. 

Jacob remembered a good looking face latticed with angry red slashes on the left side, that still felt raw and hot underneath his fingertips when he had dared touch them, and then remembered months of anger being screamed at him.

Despite the sourness, Jacob clung to the good memories like a moth to the flame. When a life was as hellish as his, he had to cling to what honey he could. Memories of sweet ‘welcome home!’s, memories of sweet kisses and soft words. Memories of gentle hands on his skin that otherwise repulsed anyone, but Matthew had traced with gentle fingertips and gentler presses of his lips. Matthew had been the first person to not be disgusted by the scars...

Jacob had stopped sharpening his knife, his arms were just in his lap.

“Jo…”

“I know, I know,” Joseph said, coming over and bending down so that he could rest his forehead against Jacob’s. The touch was comforting, just a little. 

What would have been completely comforting was a certain blond in his lap, chattering away about their time apart and just so damn happy to see him, fingers scraping across the shaved sides of his head comforting as Jacob got lost in his safe space.

But he fucked that up…

He had been so used to good things never happening to him or coming at a cutting price that he had run like a coward. If he put enough physical distance between him and happiness, maybe when it came to bite him in the ass, it would not hurt as much. He was so sure that his marriage was going to end in bitter pain that he went ahead and sabotaged it and actually ruined it because… it was a good thing. It was such a good thing and he went and he fucked it up and destroyed it.

“But he is coming. He will be here.”

“When?”

“Soon. Trust me, you will know before I can even say anything,” Joseph smiled, getting up and leaving. Leaving Jacob with his knife and renewed painful yearning.

* * *

Part of Jacob wished his old house was still in his territory. But technically it was on the edges of Faith’s. That foolish part of him wished he could spruce up the old place, clean out the dust, make it clean and presentable and welcome Matthew home in a way that Matthew had done for him many times. But that part was foolish. Jacob had sat silently during enough of Matthew’s angry phone calls to know that Matthew hated being married to him. Months of Jacob never coming or only coming for a ‘blink and miss it’ amount of time and pretty much making Matthew carry the brunt of their marriage had well and truly fucked him and the majority chances of saving their marriage over.

Besides that, Jacob was the only one that had good memories of that house. Matthew just had months of lonely nights and waiting for his dumb ass to get home to remember.

But that foolish, still head over heels in love, part of him hoped that there was a chance that Matthew would forgive him and they could make things right. He thought himself too old to have… idealistic romantic daydreams, but when he was tired and the nightmares kept him up later than usual, he found his mind there. Little daydreams about him getting down on his knees and begging for forgiveness and so easily getting it. Smaller, darker daydreams had him serving his brothers’ heads on a plate to Matthew and getting his forgiveness but he would never touch those and tried his damndest to never think about them.

So instead he just tried to brace for the coming storm. His faithful, the strong ones, were armed and ready to hunt and kill. The weak were tested and if they could be made strong, then they were, and if they were still weak they were culled. He hunted Whitetails and trained Judges. He made meat out of the weak and he made the world a stronger place by cutting the weak down.

And then he was called into church one fateful night.

* * *

It was well past midnight into Joseph’s sermon. The fateful day had come and Joseph wanted the faithful to witness how he was right. Jacob sat off to the side, using his knife to scrape his nails clean, while also eyeing the faithful that had garnered Joseph and John’s attention. They were definitely too weak for his taste, but Joseph bid him to pick from the mountains, ‘they did not need everyone to go through the culling, just enough’. Seemed like a bullshit excuse, but he never liked arguing with John or Joseph and he did have plenty to choose from in the mountains.

_Weak, weak, weak, weak meat._

There was a commotion outside, Jacob lifted up his hands but Joseph, still preaching, put his hand out to him. _Stay,_ it said. That meant that the people that would try and take him were in the camp. Jacob grunted and toyed with his knife a bit, idling away the time. Joseph said that ‘God would not let them take him’ but Jacob was pretty sure his rifle would do that. Of course, not before he found out where Matthew was. No way they would let him be in the ‘breaching’ force that took Joseph, they were related after all, but one person had to know a ‘Matthew Seed’ part of the task force assigned to the case.

And low and behold, the doors opened and three very armed people that were definitely not part of their church came striding in.

The three men came in, slowly and cautiously. They were all armed and two of them had vests on over their clothing, making no attempt to hide that they were ready for a fight. They both looked weak, not fit for the church. Jacob almost wanted to doze off, probably would have just left, had the thought of leaving Joseph, John and Faith alone with armed officers did not upset his stomach. Not to mention, he still wanted to nab one of the three to demand to know where Matthew was. So he sat off to the side, watching things heat up and get tense. 

When the jumpy faithful started getting up and getting their guns out, Jacob casually got up and casually stood by Joseph. The marshall had a hand hovering near his pistol, the blond with him had a hand on a much larger handgun and the sheriff was just trying to get everyone to calm the fuck down. Almost laughable. They were all so weak--

“Now… Joseph, we do have someone we hoped would smooth things over, someone we thought…” The sheriff muttered, eyes flicking between the Seed family and the blond off to the side. “A familiar face would help.”

The sheriff reached out and took the blonde’s arm and pulled him further up front. Who… there was confusion on all their faces. They had no idea who this man was--

Wait.

It was hard to see in the low light of the church, but on the left side of his face, were those scars? Familiar scars--

“Come on, Jo-Jo. Don’t make this harder than it needs to be.”

Jacob felt every nerve go off in his body. He knew that voice, he knew those scars, he knew that shade of blond hair and he knew those tired eyes. How many times had he sat silently by John as he fielded another angry phone call from Matthew, demanding a divorce. How many times had Jacob played back recordings of Matthew’s calmer voice just so he could be wistful and hurt.

He instinctively took a step forward, Matthew stepping back away from him with a wild look in his eyes. Jacob started to take another step towards him, wanting to close the distance between them. To close any of the distance between them, because for the first time in his life, Jacob knew what ‘in the same room but physically in different universes’ meant right now. Because Matthew was right fucking there, and they were physically closer than they had been in years but… he still felt so far away.

Only for Joseph’s hand to come up and stop him. Part of him wanted to shove Joseph aside, tell his younger brother to go fuck himself, fuck this church and fuck this cult… but he just stood there, shaking and wanting to run up to Matthew and do… something. Anything.

But no… Joseph had plans. Jacob had to watch Matthew cuff Joseph with shaking hands.

“S-stop staring at me, Jake,” Matthew said, his hands were shaking so bad that Jacob saw that Joseph was making a point of holding still to ease his burden. “Stop… stop staring at me… please…”

Joseph was cuffed and turned towards the front of the church. He heard Matthew mutter something and Joseph say something back before turning to look at him over his shoulder.

“I will return with him or have him returned, you need not worry, Jacob!”

And then they were gone.

“That went surprisingly well,” John said in the empty church.

Jacob felt rooted to the spot and felt an overwhelming and crushing sense of dread and guilt wash over him. Matthew was right fucking there, he was right there and once a-fucking-gain, he did not go to him. It absolutely had to ruin his chances of even speaking with Matthew again, absolutely. Fuck, he fucked it all up again---

“Jacooobbbb?” John said, waving a hand in front of his face.

Jacob suddenly felt like a puppet that had just had its string pulled too tight and almost to the point of snapping. He breathed out raggedly and just walked out of the church, ignoring John and Faith’s inquiries about his health. 

Did not need to be a prophet to know shit was going down outside. A few faithful had apparently climbed onto the bird that Matthew and his people had brought and someone had thrown themself into the blades and they had brought the bird down. Faithful was screaming and hollering to go, getting into vehicles to chase down the fiery wreckage.

“Hey, hey!” Jacob yelled, grabbing the first faithful he saw, digging his fingers in hard enough to leave dark bruises in their arm underneath their filthy jacket. “I want a report on if Matthew lived the second you know, got it?”

The faithful, petrified, just nodded stiffly before bolting like the weak deer that they were the second Jacob’s fingers opened, watching them go into the night with the others as they screamed Joseph’s praises into the dark night. In the distance, Jacob could see smoke that he assumed was from the downed bird and he felt ice cold dread in his heart. What if… what if…

Jacob stayed in the camp for an agonizing ten minutes before the radios screamed to life:

“ _HUNT THEM DOWN! DON’T SHOOT THE FIFTH HERALD!_ ”

Jacob almost collapsed. Matthew had survived and now Joseph’s faithful was hunting him down. Soon, Matthew would be home and then the new terrors of trying to talk to him would take place, but for now… now Jacob had to wait.

* * *

Jacob returned to the mountains. And bright and early and his mind going smoky at the edges from no sleep, he got a radio in from Joseph. One that did not sit right with him.

Matthew had survived the crash and then proceeded to escape with another of the team. That man, some weakling named Burke, was handed over to Faith after they had shot the escape car off a bridge. Matthew had yet to be found, though with no dead body, they were not going to assume the worst. And given that Joseph believed his own horseshit about his ‘visions’, Joseph was adamant that Matthew was still alive.

“ _I have seen him, Jacob, he is standing with his family._ ”

Jacob had had enough for one set of twenty four hours and decided that half a bottle of whiskey would be enough to get him drunk enough to sleep. Drunk enough to sleep without nightmares as well, if he was lucky though he rarely was.

And he was right… he was not lucky. 

His nightmares was of chasing a familiar screaming voice through his house, pleading for help and just being around the corner no matter how hard Jacob ran. The pictures on his walls were all wrong, not paintings and gentle photos, but of corpses and gore encrusted predators. Guns and knives hung where he knew was supposed to be gentle things. Furniture slowly being replaced with bloated and rotten corpses. It was not his home… never was…

He woke to the sound of his radio screaming and his hangover screaming as well. He answered the radio before it made him sick, though the news that came in almost did that in of itself.

Matthew was alive and currently causing hell in John’s territory. Shooting faithful, setting fire to things, he even liberated Fall’s End from John’s control. Pretty much it was pretty fucking obvious that he had no interest in helping Joseph and the church, even if Joseph’s tone made it sound like he was assured that Matthew was just a lost lamb with his ears full of lies. No, no, Joseph did not know Matthew like he thought he did. Jacob knew Matthew, Matthew had a gold heart and iron clad morals. He saw a bad guy and that was it, no grey, no questions. And given that laws were out the window, Matthew saw the chance to permanently get rid of the bad guys. Any pushing or trying to convince him otherwise would just further his conviction.

“ _We will return him home, Jacob, I promise,_ ” Joseph said.

“... Sure… I’m… I’m gonna talk to John. Make sure he knows to not hurt Matthew. John is…”

“ _Wrathful and filled with Pride and Greed. Those are his sins, Jacob, he must wear them and then cut them free. But you are right to be worried. Try to not be too hard on John, please?_ ”

Jacob felt that insufferable itch to yell at Joseph again, to fulfill his own Wrath that Joseph dared not breath about. Joseph saw a use for his rage, saw how cooly and calmly he handled it that few would think he was angry. There was a difference between being angry and being violent, those two did not always come together uninvited, and many believed that he was simply violent with no fire. But he did… he very much did… but Joseph was right. He needed to be calm with John, or his spiteful little shit brother would ‘whoops’ and hurt Matthew just to get back at Jacob. Childish petty revenge, but with adult cruelty and malice.

So Jacob buzzed John.

“John.”

“ _Hello, Jacob. To what do I owe the pleasure?_ ”

“I need you to listen to me. Don’t hurt Matthew.”

“ _Of course dear brother! But, Joseph wants him to go through confession. And Confession demands pain to be true._ ”

“I know that, John. But you can still not torture him,” Jacob snapped.

There was silence and some part of Jacob’s mind was telling him that John wanted him wilting with guilt, but he felt none. He loved his brother, he really did, but John needed a firm hand sometimes, especially if he was getting or was going to be violent. Not that Jacob would hurt his brother, but a firm ‘No’ when everyone else was screaming John’s favorite word would at least give him a shock.

“ _I would never._ ”

Jacob did not trust him, but given that Joseph ‘frowned’ upon them leaving their designated territories for now… Jacob had to.

* * *

“I asked you to do ONE FUCKING THING, John!”

“ _Are you really going to believe him over--_ ”

“Yes, because it fucking sounds like you!”

Of course Jacob was right not to trust his youngest brother. Of fucking course he was. Because John was so insufferable predictable in how he was in being an asshole and it only took a little scuttlebug to find out that John had tried fucking _drowning_ his husband during his cleansings and Matthew to confirm it. And of fucking course he would trust Matthew on this, Matthew had no reason to lie when there was half a dozen witnesses at the event and to be quite fucking honest? Matthew had no reason to lie to him to begin with. What did he gain? Them fighting? They always fucking fought, now and even back then.

“ _Now brother, you know that confession does not come without pain--_ ”

“Confession can’t come if someone’s fucking dead either, John!” Jacob snapped. “What the fuck is your problem with Matthew anyway? You like almost drowning the people that you want to recruit, but you never almost cross the line like this.”

“ _Jacob._ ”

“Not now, Joseph. John and me need words,” Jacob snapped.

“ _Jacob. Let me talk to John._ ”

And… just like that, the fight bled from him. Because Joseph had him fucking trained like he trained Judges.

“... Fine.”

“ _Thank you, trust me, I will speak with him about letting his sin take over._ ”

And that was the end of that.

Jacob put his head in his hands and just tried to focus on breathing and tried to push away the images of John holding Matthew under those Bliss tainted waters. Matthew would have fought and thrashed and bit and clawed, just like a trapped wolf--

_”You know what you remind me of?” Jacob said as he started down Matthew as they circled around one another. Play wrestling, but also showing Matthew how to handle himself in hand to hand combat. Matthew moved like him now, even if they were just fucking around. Matthew definitely could fight his ground against anyone untrained._

_“Huh?” Matthew asked, grinning slyly._

_“A wolf.”_

_“Oh?” Matthew asked, ducking down further, eyes trained on Jacob._

_“Yep. Real pretty to look at, but watch out--”_

_Matthew tackled Jacob, but he saw it coming. He still let Matthew have it, going down with him and getting pinned underneath Matthew’s smaller and lighter frame. Lips pressed against his throat._

_“-- that pretty creature can go for the throat.”_

_“So, a wolf ey?” Matthew giggled against his throat before teeth playfully scrapped across the skin and drew a short groan out of Jacob._

_“My wolf,” Jacob said before hauling him up for a kiss._

“... John better watch out… Matthew has teeth,” Jacob muttered.


	6. Behind Wolf's Teeth pt2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> WARNING: Canon typical elements (violence, gore, killing/murder, drug abuse/use and drugging), hallucinations tied to mental trauma, brief bouts of feralization caused by drug overdose, language.
> 
> Back to Matthew after this one

Jacob took Matthew leaving Faith’s territory better than John did. Then again, John and him had a tense and heated silence filling the air between them while their devoted faithful duked it out like children in the silence. Joseph soothed what he could, but it was obvious that there was no fixing what was wrong. John had _enjoyed_ attempting to drown Matthew and he was not the least bit sorry for it and he was not going to apologize. Well… he did but Jacob knew his brother well enough to know when the lying lawyer came out and gave honeyed words with hidden barbs.

It had almost been funny when John had tried to stir things with Matthew on the family line, only for Matthew to bite back. Matthew had teeth, wolf’s teeth, and John had snake fangs with no real poison and when it came to a contest of which had the best bite? Matthew would always win. Jacob smirked as he practically felt John stewing silently on the line while Faith filled in the silence, welcoming Matthew to her territory and bidding that they spend time together.

Jacob did feel better that Matthew was away from John for the time being at least. Faith held no ill will towards Matthew, though she would see him as someone that needed to be converted. Bliss was, perhaps, the gentlest way to go about bringing someone within the family, a sweet poison so to speak. And honestly, Jacob felt a lot better about Matthew potentially being doped up on some Bliss rather than drowned again or even worse--

Jacob, sitting at his desk as he looked over the reports from his scouts about the Whitetails, flinched and nearly sent a pen flying, as the vivid image of Matthew strapped to a chair and John carving a sin into his skin. A cold sweat formed and the bit of his stomach froze into solid ice. John would want to carve it free too, if the baptism was anything to go by, and the thought of John holding a knife to Matthew’s skin just made his skin crawl and his current sour opinion of his brother curdled all the more.

Yes, it was better that Matthew be in Faith’s territory. At least for the time being. 

And… he was just that much closer to Jacob then.

* * *

Tales of the bloody war path that Matthew were carving through Faith’s territory seemed to spring up within an hour of his being there. Sure, there was tales of the terror that he caused in John’s territory, but there was a difference between an outpost taken down with a sizable body count and the absolute gory trails that Jacob were hearing were being painted through Faith’s territory that were being able to be seen from helicopters. It was actually sort of disturbing.

God… what the hell was going on with him? Sure, Matthew had a temper that seemed to only get worse with age and his wearing of dealing with John, but this… what the hell was going on?

Jacob contemplated it as he sat at his desk and tried to map out the attacks in Faith’s territory to see if there was a pattern that he could alert sister dearest too. But it was just… violent and bloody it seemed. Like a feral wolf just attacking anything that happened to catch his fancy on sight. But in this case, whatever Chosen that Matthew happened to stumble upon--

The pitter patter of liquid hitting the ground made his brow pinch. What the hell, it was not raining…

He turned around in his seat, frowning at the room behind him and--

He was not alone.

“Fuck…” He cursed softly.

“What’s wrong, Jake, aren’t you happy to see me?”

And he knew he was hallucinating, that the person standing there with him now was not Matthew. Jacob pressed his hands over his eyes quickly to try and avoid the nightmarish sight, trying to will it away.

“Someone’s cranky,” Miller chuckled from where he usually appeared.

“Aww!”

Jacob wanted to ignore the voices, ignore them until his brain gave him a break and whisked them away. But the siren call of Matthew’s voice made him drop his hands to face the visions of horror.

Whenever Matthew appeared before, it was always how he used to look. Now that he had seen Matthew’s face, the hallucinations were starting to look how he looked when he had come into Joseph’s church. But twisted by his broken mind. The silvery scars were red and dripped blood that vanished off his body as soon as they fell, eye whites horrifically red and bloodshot, a mouth that opened just a little too wide and teeth stained with gore. Miller, who always looked like the butchered and dried out corpse that Jacob had left him, just turned his grinning mummified face towards him.

“There he is,” Matthew cooed. Blood dripped from the corner of his mouth and stuck to his beard like strawberry syrup. “What’s wrong Jakie? I would have thought you would have been happy to see me?”

“When is that fuck ever happy?” Miller chortled.

“Ain’t that the truth.”

Jacob’s hands shook where they rested on his thighs. His jaw was clenched so tight it hurt.

“You’re not real…”

“Not real? How rude!”

“I tell that rude ass motherfucker that every time he says that,” Miller laughed.

“Looks like the gentleman that I married went and left… now that he was ever around for me to know,” The vision of Matthew shrugged. Blood dripped down the side of his face where the scars were, raw and open and bleeding. He turned to look at Miller. “Did you know that?”

“No, but I’m not surprised. This piece of shit a neglectful husband? Garbage! Just like daddy dearest, ey Jack?”

“No… I…”

“Then what would you call it, Jake?” The vision of Matthew asked, making Jacob look at him, blood pouring from his eyes in painful tears now. The eye whites were red and turning black. “You were never around. It took you two months to find out that I had nearly fucking died in a car crash. Two months to find out that I had moved out of our home and hadn’t even tried to contact you. What. Would. You. Call. That?”

Jacob put his hands back over his eyes. It was too much, it was far too much. Not him, not him saying the words that hurt most.

“I was trying to build us a home… a future…”

“We had a home. We had a future.”

That voice was in his ear, the ghost sensation of lips against the shell of his ear making his skin break out in painful sensitivity.

“I think you were scared. I think you were weak. Nothing had worked out in your life before and when it finally did, you panicked and ran. Like a spooked deer, like a spooked pig… you always thought you were being cute when you referred to me as ‘your little wolf’... well Jake… the wolf is at your door--”

A knock made Jacob’s hands drop, grateful to see the room empty. Of course it was empty, it was all in his fucking head again. 

“What?” He yelled, rubbing his face, trying to get blood flow going and wipe away at the cold sweat of his brow.

“Sir, John has been trying to contact you…”

Sighing, Jacob turned his chair around and flicked the radio on, tuning it to the ‘Seed only’ frequency.

“John?”

“ _FINALLY!_ ” John yelled over the radio. “ _We need your help. Faith fucked up--_ ”

“ _I didn’t know!_ ” Faith sobbed somewhere in the background.

“ _Faith fucked up and while I had Matthew in custody to send over to you, she thought he was someone I needed… she overdosed him on Bliss._ ”

Jacob was already on his feet, getting his rifle and his knife.

“ _He’s on a rampage, Jacob! We knew he had a unique reaction to the Bliss, but nothing like this--_ ”

There was a rather unusual sound.

“John?” Jacob asked.

“ _M-matthew? N-now just… just calm down…_ ”

John’s side went dead suddenly and Jacob already had his rifle in his hands and was storming towards his truck.

“Peaches! You’re with me, come on!”

“S-sir?” Pratt asked.

“You’re gonna be important for once in your life, sweetheart,” Jacob said as he shoved the man into the truck before getting behind the wheel, not bothering to buckle in, just start it and slam on the gas as he started driving towards the ranch. Hard enough to make both of them slam against their seats. 

“You’re gonna be bait.”

* * *

With a big game predator, the key was knowing how it moved and how to draw it out. Sure, other things could help, but movement and bait were the two main things.

Jacob did not know how Matthew was moving, doped up on Bliss and suffering from what appeared to be total opposite effects that most everyone seemed to experience. Not to mention, Jacob no longer knew how Matthew fought. When they were together-- when he was actually home, he had taught Matthew how to fight like him, to move like him, to attack like him. But that was years ago, things changed, things changed a lot.

Bait, he did know. If he had to guess, even doped up as he was, Matthew was still able to partially recognize some people. He seemed to go after John and Faith at least, so if Jacob sent that sniffling weakling out into the woods where the Chosen had managed to push him into, that Matthew would go after him. If nothing else, getting Matthew chasing the weakling would give Jacob the chance to use a military grade tranquilizer to take down Matthew, since Bliss bullets would only just make things far worse.

So he took them out into the woods and barked an order to the weakling to start running through the woods. He tried something akin to bravery, but more quivering lip and glassy tear filled eyes. A swift kick to the ass sent that weak meat running into the woods, breathing hard as he tore off like a spooked deer. Jacob gave them a few moments and then took off, listening to the sound of Peaches' sloppy and loud footsteps and keeping an ear out for another pair. It took a few tense minutes until Jacob heard something that was not an animal, and something that went after Peaches.

Jacob maneuvered himself into chase behind, making sure that Matthew's drug fueled haze was pointed forward after Pratt. Then it was just a matter of waiting for the moment to get a clear shot, watching Matthew getting clearer and clearer as Jacob managed to close the distance between them. Listening to Matthew's ragged and bellowing breathing as he chased after a now frantic Pratt. Not that he blamed the weak meat, if Jacob had a drugged fueled berserker on his heels, he would not be the bravest around. He would not whimper and cry like Jacob was hearing ahead of the chase, of course, but still.

The chance came to shoot when they entered a clearing and the moonlight hit Matthew's back just right.

There was no hesitation.

One pull of the trigger and Matthew reeled as the tranq hit his shoulder. He staggered and kept going, because it would take a few minutes. But the dart was in and Jacob just needed to keep up until Matthew started to slow and sway on his feet, his running going into a jog into a brisk walk into a meander into a stagger. And Matthew did stagger after Pratt, swaying on his feet like a drunken sailor, leaning side to side as through the world was rocking underneath his feet. His hands flailed out to try and steady him but he moved like he could not move his arms just right. Grunting and puffing like he had just run miles and he just had, now acting as though they were finally hitting him. Until his foot seemed to stick to the ground and he fell to his knees. Matthew swayed and then just went still.

Putting his rifle away, Jacob walked over to him, kneeling where Matthew was kneeling in the grass. Red and bloodshot eyes sluggishly slide over to him and a low groan slipped out from between Matthew's lips. Jacob reached over and thumbed away at a bloody and muddy spot on his cheek and Matthew's teeth tried to sluggishly follow in a bite, one that Jacob easily avoided by nonchalantly pulling his hand away. Matthew groaned again and his eyes closed.

"Take him back to the center. Let me get Faith home and check on John," Jacob said, standing and letting his Chosen pick up Matthew and put him into a truck.

Matthew would be home soon, he just needed to send Faith home and then he would be home with his husband.


	7. Steel Trap

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> WARNING: Mentioned past M!Deputy/Jacob Seed, canon typical elements (mentioned drug overdose, mentioned torture and brain washing, mentioned graphic violence and gore), idealized/romantized thoughts and actions about bad people cut from one's life, briefly mentioned non-sexual nudity, mentioned injuries and scars, possessive/unhealthy behavior (Jacob towards Matthew)
> 
> Going to dig into Jacob and Matthew's past relationship over the next chapter or so

Matthew’s feet and legs dragged along the floor, head hammering and throbbing to the beat of his slow and exhausted heart. His eyes swam, unable to focus on anything long enough, only giving him overlapping and swimming images of his eyes briefly catching something before fading off again. His arms and shoulders were killing him from how he was being held up as he was dragged, but he supposed this was the nicest way to drag someone along, they could have dragged him like the few people he had seen before his vision went funny. Rough and dirty hands gripping hard enough to bruise even to the untrained eye, dragging by clothing and sometimes flailing limbs or gripping a fistful of hair. Matthew had seen them go as he had sat in the bed of a truck and vomited and shudder and shook and worked through the remains of the tranquilizer that he had been shot with.

Now it was his turn, and he was so fucking exhausted by what had happened to him… what had happened to him? He remembered the ranch and then… the pain in his shoulder and then waking up in the truck. He knew it was a tranq because he had pulled the vial out and licked the bloodied needle in a blur and he could taste a chemical compound and he could make out some of his symptoms. Now he was bone tired and had nothing left in him. He was too tired to be angry or sad or terrified or upset. He just willed his body to remain limp to allow the dragging to happen without incident as they dragged him where they had dragged the others. To a small and dingy room with blood stained chairs and a projector and screen.

“Over here.”

He was dragged in and sat in a chair before being locked in. He still felt so bone deep tired, but he was slowly getting his facilities back. He blinked a few times as his vision slowly but surely started to right out.

“I don’t think the herald will like this…”

“The Baptist wants him indoctrinated, and the father has mentioned wanting him ‘on a leash’.”

“But they aren’t here, and I don’t want to get fed to the Judges for putting a herald in The Chair. Let alone the Soldier's husband.”

Matthew looked around a bit more, now that he could actually somewhat see. The carpet was just one big, old and reeking bloodstain. The other people looked like they were in uniformed gear, a group then? He was too weak to break the restraints on his own, though he could maybe force his wrists through, that would mean losing a chunk of skin or dislocating something and neither he could afford. The room reeked of rot, meat and blood and the smell stuck to his dehydrating tongue until his spit turned sour and his stomach throbbed with the lingering pains in his head. And the thought hit him.

_Torture chamber._

There was the sounds of shouting within the building, Matthew sliding his eyes over to the door where the sound seemed drawn too. He listened to an, unfortunately, familiar voice grow stronger behind it and the sound of it barking orders. The men inside looked stuck between military statueness and terrified shaking. And it all seemed so very...

Jacob pushed open the door and Staci was trailing behind him, blue eyes sweeping over the group tied to the chairs, thrashing against their restraints now with vigor. His eyes paused on Matthew for half a second, before he strode in. He motioned to someone behind Matthew and the lights turned off. A projector flickered to life and gory images started to show on the screen. Dead animals, rotting animals, predators buried in their prey. The people around him started to panic more, whimpering and crying and fighting against their restraints harder as Jacob started one of his sermons about strength and weakness, casually walking over to Matthew.

Once there, Jacob bent down in front of him and for a moment… for a moment Matthew was expecting the same harsh punishment he had received from all the Seeds thus far. Drowning, drug overdose and Joseph just standing there and letting it happen. That the apparent love that they had once had for him had twisted and turned into a need to hurt and break him ‘for his own good’ and there was something about that potentially coming from Jacob that just… broke something. Not to mention he had just surfaced with a huge blank spot in his memory and was generally scared, confused and frightened.

He started crying.

Jacob flinched, stopping his sermon mid word, and then abandoning it all together to start quietly and gently shushing him. Then those familiar scarred hands were at his restraints... starting to undo them. The scrap of familiar callouses brushing against his hands was almost soothing.

“Sir?”

“Quiet.”

“Sir, we have orders from the Baptist and the Father--”

“Quiet.”

“Sir, please, this man has done so much harm--” One faithful said, waking right up to Jacob.

That was a mistake. 

Jacob’s face got hard and angry as he stood up to address this man. Jacob sniffed dismissively as he looked this man up and down. A butcher sizing up a pig, a wolf sizing up a rabbit. And then Jacob’s fist met the man’s face with a wet crunch. The man, probably dead or very much wishing it, crumbled to the ground in a limp pile. The others just kept their heads down, Pratt included, though he trembled like a leaf in a storm. 

Snorting dismissively, Jacob went back to undoing his wrist restraints. And too tired was he, that Matthew just allowed it. Allowed Jacob to undo his restraints and then easily haul him to his feet. Once there, Jacob bent down and scooped him up, carrying him in his arms while he just gave into exhaustion and laid his weary head and still tear wet face to rest on Jacob’s shoulder.

“Now, you can continue. Peaches.”

“Y-yes sir.”

Jacob walked out of the room, Pratt following quickly after. When the door closed, Matthew swore he heard music, but he was too tired and already nodding off against Jacob. How many times had he fallen asleep on the couch, waiting for Jacob to come back down from the mountains, only to wake up just like this? Being carried to a bed that would be empty by morning… fucking Jacob Seed.

Things went dark for a moment, Matthew realizing that his mind was trying desperately to shut off, only to be interrupted by Jacob putting him down on his feet somewhere. When he blinked owlishly, he saw that he was in a shower stall and Jacob was standing in the entryway to it.

“Peaches, go get me a change of clothes from my room.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Quickly.”

Matthew heard Pratt’s footsteps rushing away, blinking at where he heard them past the walls, before his exhausted beyond all measure eyes slid to his husband’s face. His eyes were dry, he felt every centimeter of the slide of flesh against flesh as he finally met Jacob’s eyes. Those damned, summer sky blue Seed eyes.

“Shower. Sleep. Then talk.”

Figuring that was more than he had ever gotten out of their marriage let alone out of this currently really shitty situation, Matthew just sighed and nodded. He was too tired to do anything, too sore and injured. Jacob was a trained soldier and even if killing Peggies was giving him a HELL of a lot of training in the art of killing motherfuckers in increasingly creative and vicious manners, there was just so physical way for him to take down Jacob to get away right then and there. He had to just roll with it and wait for the chance to get away.

There was no shower curtain in the rather spartan stall, and Jacob was not budging. He just turned around and stepped a little towards the edge. It was incredibly sad that he had the man’s back and was currently too weak to do anything about it. Sighing again, Matthew just gingerly stripped his absolutely filthy clothing off of himself. He winced at the filth caked onto it, mud and gore from both himself and others mixed into a hideous new color that he would not name, before dropping them to the floor in a wet and ruined heap before turning to the showerhead.

He was expecting the bitter cold, figured that Jacob would not want his followers getting soft and weak with nice things like hot or even room temperature showers. It still stung and ripped a pained whine out of him as it hit his bruised and battered body. Something that made Jacob flinch and almost made up for it. But he said nothing about it, best not to be rude to the incredibly violent man that was currently showing him a great deal of mercy in a situation where it would have been very convenient to the bad guys to show him none. Gritting his teeth, Matthew just quickly tried to scrap a few weeks of filth off his skin.

Past the dirt and grime, the patterning of bruises and scars was the first disturbing thing revealed. Cuts and dark patches and bruises from his tumbles and from being hunted across the counties like a wild animal by the Chosen. He threw soured looks at the silvery little slivers of scars on his hands and arms from all the fighting and killing that he had been doing the past few weeks. He lifted up his leg and prodded at the still slightly sore spot that that one bullet had skimmed his leg.

He wanted to go home…

Once he had cleaned what felt like two layers of skin off his body and felt even slightly cleaner than before, he turned back to Jacob’s back.

“Finished,” He rasped.

Jacob just walked away. Matthew did not need to look down to know that his clothes had been taken. Not that Jacob needed to take his clothing to ensure that he would not just walk out, Jacob knew he was too weak to do anything and even still, Matthew was not the kind of man to just walk out naked to fight hand and tooth.

A towel held out by a hand appeared, not Jacob.

“Grow up, Jake. You’ve seen me naked before.”

Jacob grunted.

“Or is it you don’t want to see what this ‘Eden’ of yours has done to me?”

Vicious? Cruel? Yes. And needed. Matthew had years and years of hatred bubbling up inside of him, locked away while he had been too scared to face the Seed family. Now that he was here? He was taking his dick punches when he could.

Jacob took it gracefully at least, stepping out to hand him the scratchy and thin towel. Did not miss the quick flick of blue from his head to his toes. He must have looked so different it must have been alien, between transitioning and nearly ten years passing. Not to mention, the last time that Jacob had seen the scars from the accident, they had still been red and sore and tender to the touch, and now they were healed more or less.

When he took the towel, Jacob turned back around.

“Scars healed,” Jacob muttered as he toweled his tender skin off, both from the bruises and the cold.

“Scars tend to do that with a good environment, Jake,” He muttered back before looking at his left arm and the liberal spray of silvery lines across the skin. “They still hurt like a bitch from time to time.”

No comment, and Matthew did not want one. Just handed out a pile of clothing to him when he heard the towel drop. Jacob’s clothing, he noted, but otherwise kept to himself. Just pulled it on before ducking down to roll up the pant legs just a little before standing and grunting once he was dressed. Jacob turned, nodded at him once, before walking with Matthew trailing after him. He was too tired to berate himself for being so weak at this point, just blindly stumbled after Jacob. First to slip into a pair of boots and socks that were not his, and then through the building and then out of it and into the night.

He shivered. Both from still being cold from the ice cold shower and the night air hitting him. Almost mechanically, Jacob shrugged out of his jacket and wrapped it around his shoulders. He was too tired to protest the action and too tired to even verbally make note of it. Just shrugged into it and buttoned it up and unrolled the sleeves to hide from the cold, shivering both from that and the way that Jacob’s body heat lingered in the fabric. 

He, however, did not miss the look that Jacob gave him. The slow roll of summer blue over his body, the barest hint of a smirk, before he was looking ahead as they walked out to where an envoy of trucks were waiting. Jacob always did love seeing his clothing on Matthew, nothing failed to get his attention faster or more. Honestly, Matthew probably should have seen the signs of his being transgender because wearing ‘men’s’ clothing had made him happy and finally comfortable, back when he used to shimmy into something of Jacob’s. But he was too ecstatic over finally getting his husband’s waning attention to really pay attention to himself.

“This one. In the back, peaches.”

A rusty and red pickup. Matthew opened the door and climbed into the front seat while Pratt shuffled meekly into the backseat. Jacob took up the wheel, sticking his head out to yell something, before leaning back in. He started up the engine, flicked both the heat and the radio on, before urging the truck down the road.

Matthew blinked, closed his eyes for a second, and when he opened them again, they were pulling into a new compound that Matthew was completely unfamiliar with. He blinked owlishly as he tried to puzzle out how he had gotten there as Jacob and Pratt got out. He tried to get his exhausted body to move, only for it to not even try, just sit there and feeling like his face was fucking numb. Long enough for Jacob to get out and walk around the truck, opening the door and unbuckling him. He was easily picked up and carried inside the compound, not even bothering to look around as he heard the Judges snarling, people crying and screaming, and the sounds of someone preaching over a loudspeaker system.

“Sleep.”

“Shut up.”

He was carried into the building and then up a flight of stairs, through more space and then he found himself being carefully laid in a bed. The second his head hit something semi-soft, he was out like a light.


	8. In the wolf's den

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> WARNING: Canon typical elements (mentioned drug usage, mentioned torture/mind break, mentioned animal abuse, violence, death, murder), mentioned unhappy/unhealthy marriage, imprisonment
> 
> In the wolf's den among the wolves, Matthew has to get out without getting eaten alive

Matthew slept. 

Matthew slept a lot. 

He knew he did from the brief windows that he was awake, he saw light and then darkness each at least two times each one after another, so at least two full days had passed. He remembered shaking and screaming sometimes, he remembered sobbing some other times. Sometimes he was warm to the point of being sticky and dewy with sweat, sometimes he was cold to the point that he bones ached and his teeth chattered out a songy rhythm. The bay of wolves and Judges and the distant sound of misery and torture haunted the edges of any vision with red and black. His dreams were always nightmares and his nightmares always tasted like old meat and smelled like sour bile as his wolf’s teeth tore through flesh, others or his own.

Someone tried to get him to keep water and some watery soup down. He found it hard to swallow, because it seemed like each time that he opened his mouth, the smell of filthy dogs, explosives and soured blood flooded in and coated his tongue like sweet ash and he would be sick. Mostly he laid in bed and felt like he was at death’s door and his knuckles almost brushing the wood in a first knock.

At some point… at some fucking point… Jacob was there. And he knew because you never could forget the heat of Jacob’s skin, the burn scars trapped so much warmth inside of him. So much that touching him felt so warm that it straddled that line between uncomfortable and painful. Matthew felt that as the back of Jacob’s hand mistakenly pressed the back of his hand to Matthew’s forehead. Jake always said that he used to do it for Jo-Jo and Johnny, they got sick a lot as kids, and even when he got burned, it was a hard habit to kick. And even if every day he woke up wishing they had never, they had been married, and at one point, Matthew had intimate knowledge of a lot of Jake’s skin.

The third day, he finally woke up.

Details started rapidly pouring in as the gravity of the situation slammed into him within seconds of consciousness.

He was in a small room, one window over a cluttered desk, one dingy mattress on an old metal bed frame. He was not bound in any way and besides some minor aches and pains, he seemed physically as fine as he could be given his recent situation. The air was musty and dusty and smelled and tasted faintly coppery. Outside he could hear voices and wolves howling--

Something on his ankle.

He looked down and sneered darkly at what he knew was an ankle monitor. Sure, Jacob could have just handcuffed him to the bed, but they both knew he could get out of those. Matthew highly suspected that if he tampered with the damn thing, Jacob would get an alarm, just like the real things. Bastard…

Gingerly, Matthew sat up, feeling groggy and heavy, but pushing on regardless. Shuffling towards the door, Matthew tested the door handle and found it unlocked. When he checked the frame, he found no signs of anything that could have set off his ankle bracelet, so he pushed open the door and stepped out into a dirty and bloodied hallway. He kept his ears open as he started quietly making his way through the building. He could still hear Chosen and faithful and Judges outside, a few murmuring voices inside as well, but few, probably Jacob making sure everyone was working rather than just standing around.

Get Pratt, get out, get Pratt, get out.

Matthew was right about there being few people inside the building. When he crept to a banister and peeked around, seeing the floor above him and below him, he could only see two armed Chosen. So he took one out silently and threw him into a dirty and grimy room, taking his knife but leaving the gun. No fucking way he could take on so many faithful on his own with a gun and if Pratt was in the building, he needed to quietly get to him and not give any loud indication to kill him. Pratt was an asshole, but he absolutely did not deserve any of the shit that he had probably dealt with while being under Jacob’s boot.

He made it outside, creeping along the cages of snarling Judges and crying people that looked half dead and dragged through the mud. He gritted his teeth as he kept low and just tried to keep an eye and ear out for Pratt--

His ankle monitor went off, a loud screeching sound that made him slam his hands over his ears on reflex. The moment of hesitation before running or trying to rip the damn thing off since it was already going off was all it took for three Chosen to find him and aim assault rifles at his head. Given that he had a knife and not much else, he just sighed and tossed the knife aside before putting up his hands. 

Had he not been more tired, he might have started fighting and been willing to take a bullet or two to get out, but his arms shook badly as he kept them raised, and his knees wobble when one of the faithful barked at him to get up and follow them. There was no way he could make it out if there was a fight between him and freedom, not without dying and he was not quite keen on that just yet. No, he was stuck for now.

For now at least…

The faithful marched him across the compound and then out to the back where the building met a dock and then a lake. There was an unfortunately familiar head of red hair and Pratt, watching a few Chosen pack up boats with weapons, Bliss barrels and explosives. As they approached, Matthew’s ankle monitor still going off, Jacob turned around and gave him what could have been an innocently playful smirk. Matthew just saw a smug ass grin.

“Go,” Jacob ordered to the Chosen, the three taking off promptly.

Still smirking, Jacob reached into his pocket and pulled out a pin, going over, ducking down and silencing the alarm by pushing the pin into the slot and then coming back up with it again, still smirking at Matthew. It made him sick to his stomach.

If Matthew’s arms were not shaking so badly, he would have tried to punch the look off the bastard’s face. But as it stood, he was still shaking and he actually was starting to feel a little sick to his stomach and he was forced to walk with and then beside Jacob as he oversaw the boats being loaded up. He had to play nice for now, wait for a chance. First chance he got? Jacob was going to get gutted like a stuck pig.

“Pratt, you okay?” Matthew asked.

Pratt refused to look up from the ground, hands clasped behind his back and standing stock still.

“Pratt…”

“You’re being talked to, Peaches,” Jacob said with such a cold authoritative edge that Pratt jumped, head snapping up.

“I-I’m fine!” Pratt babbled out.

“... What the fuck did you do to him…” Matthew breathed in horror. This was not Pratt, this man looked and sounded like him but this man was… broken.

“He was not strong, but he still has some usage, so he was not culled,” Jacob shrugged.

“You tortured him,” Matthew gritted out, baring his teeth.

Jacob shrugged and the edges of Matthew’s vision went red. A visceral image of stabbing Jacob again and again and again danced across his vision and a sick vicious joy filled his heart. Hope county was making into something, something vicious and mean and needing to taste blood in the air as he spilled it by the gallon. He had never been a violent man, but Hope county was making him a violent one. The Seed family was making him violent by pushing him harder and meaner to the edge.

His nails bit into his palm.

The first fucking chance…

* * *

His first escape attempt he was caught by a few Chosen that had seen him making a mad dash through the main gates, blood on his hands by the fools that had first tried to stop him. The Chosen had let loose the Judge that they had with them and he had to make a hairpin turn and throw himself up onto a cage to escape it. Jacob had choice words at them for setting a Judge on him, just words because Jacob had to keep up appearances about not favoring him.

Though it was clear that he was being favored. He was not put through the brain-washing, which apparently consisted of putting people in death matches with a song playing, conditioning them to go into a mindless state where they killed and killed and killed while Jacob’s voice told them that they were doing good. He usually got to sleep in Jacob’s bed and he actually got to eat with Jacob, so he ate better (only slightly) and more often than the others. Sure, it was still not good conditions to keep human beings, but it was better than most of the faither, definitely better than the converts, and people whispered about it behind Jacob’s back and out of earshot. Matthew heard because he was listening.

His second escape attempt, he had managed to climb a fence with his bracelet blaring away and made it about a mile out before a sharpshooter shot the ground in front of his next running step. He had remained still until the sniper revealed herself, knocked her out and took her gun and managed to gun down at least two more before someone shot him with a tranq. He woke up in Jacob’s bed again, staring at the ceiling with a migraine a mile wide and an ache in his shoulder where he had been shot.

That one was kind of rough, considering he was bed bound for a few hours and doing the drunken sailor walk the rest of the day. He was better knowing that they had swapped out Bliss bullets (at least for him) for actual tranqs, so he did not need to worry about suddenly going on murder sprees and painting the Whitetail Mountains red. But it also told him that most everyone in Jacob’s territory was in fact, ready to deal with him. 

His third attempt, he had simply grabbed Pratt and threw him over his shoulders and took off to the dock. He threw Pratt into a boat and took off. That one, someone was not stopped before they took their shot and the bullet had sliced across his arm. The next shot took out the motor, and then he was forced to wait for another boat to come out and drag them both back to the lodge. He got between Jacob and Pratt and told Jaco right then and there that it was his doing and that if one hair was touched on Pratt’s head, the bastard would regret it.

Sure, his arm hurt like hell even after it had been stitched up and wrapped up, but this attempt also gave him valuable intel like the others. First that they were watching the waters and that they had at least one guy on the roof or highest floor that there was. Also, based on how Jacob had sniffed at him but otherwise had let Pratt get off scotch-free, was that he still had some sway over Jacob. Probably not a lot and not something that could be used frequently, but he did have some sway over Jacob. Sure, did that mean his piece of shit husband still loved him while he hated the motherfucker and that was sad and fucked up and depressing? Sure. But it also meant that he had an ace in his sleeve in case the worst came to pass.

All in all, he thought he was doing some pretty good work and was already crafting his escape with Pratt over his shoulder that would actually stick.

And he kept thinking about it as Jacob called for him to join him and a few Chosen as they went out. From what he gleaned of the chatter as he kept a sullen look on his face and his head down, they were going out to check on a few outposts and check up on someone they kept referring to as ‘The Cook’. Something told Matthew that the man was not an actual cook and what he would see would be haunting instead, based on what he saw of the lodge, what was left of people after the brainwashing and just everything to do with the Judges.

But Matthew kept his head down and his lips sealed and glared anytime Jacob said anything to him and all went over smoothly as he sat in the truck while Jacob went about his business. All up until it was time to meet the Cook.

The Cook that currently had several crying civilians being tied to poles.

“What is he doing?” He asked despite himself.

“Culling the herd,” Jacob said casually.

“He’s gonna--”

The Cook was a ratty man with a bad look in his eye and carrying a flamethrower. The flamethrower told Matthew everything that he needed to know. About his brand of sadism, what he did and how he got the name.

“They can’t defend themselves…”

“That’s why they’re being culled.”

Matthew gritted his teeth, knowing that if he rushed forward the Cook would just burn him alive on impulse. The people chained and tied to the poles started screaming and screeching as the Cook got his flamethrower wrapped to his body and a Faithful with a sparker lit the fire for it. The Cook smiled like a feral predator as he approached the people that he was going to cook.

“... He’s weak.”

That got Jacob’s attention, immediately calling for the Cook to back down and turning those burning blue Seed eyes on him.

“Hmm?”

“The Cook is weak,” Matthew said plainly, flatly, meeting that hard look with one of his own.

“What?!” The Cook called over the low rumble of his flamethrower.

“Tell me how,” Jacob said as the Cook stomped over. “Tell me how he’s weak.”

“Me? Weak?!” The Cook snapped.

“I can _prove_ that he’s weak,” Matthew growled out, glaring at Jacob as he only impassively stared back. Arms crossed over his chest, but his eyes were twinkling in that way that Matthew knew. Like years ago when Matthew would tease him to rile him up and Jacob would try so hard to hide it. “Let me prove that he’s weak.”

“Sir, this is ridiculous, he’s unarmed--”

“Odds are even then,” Matthew gritted out, glaring at the Cook.

“Really? I could--”

“Do it,” Jacob said, silencing everyone, but taking his knife out. He flipped it easily in his hand and handed it hilt first towards Matthew. “Show me that he’s weak. Cull the herd.”

Glaring, Matthew took the knife and then turned back towards the Cook. The other Chosen and Jacob backed off, making space as the Cook just looked fed up with the situation. But when Matthew started circling around, steps slow and measured as he looked for weak spots, his movements, how he handled that fucking flamethrower of his. Anything to give him an edge. He found himself slinking into a sickeningly familiar stance with the knife, backhanding it as the Cook just shrugged his shoulders and lifted up his weapon.

“I’ll cull the herd,” The Cook sneered.

When they were younger, Jacob showed him how to defend himself. At first it had just seemed like a game, how to rough house, sometimes preludes to sex, mostly it had seemed like Jacob’s way of having fun with him. And, even now, Matthew was hard pressed to call it anything other than fun, because… it had been. It was only years later when he was training to be a cop and someone said he moved like a trained soldier that he realized that the games had benefits. Or maybe that was all part of it with Jacob, teaching Matthew to defend himself in a way that he did not know because back then he had been so… soft. 

Delicate.

Weak.

Just like the Cook, who widely underestimated him.

The Cook lifted up his flamethrower and aimed it at where he was, but he was already moving. The Cook was not even trying, so assured that he was going to win, that he was going to kill Matthew. But the flamethrower was heavy, not easy to move, and he was not putting in the effort to move it with any speed. Matthew was faster and his knife was faster still. When the Cook was slow to swing around, he came in close and--

“Good,” Jacob said as Matthew pulled the knife from the Cook’s throat, blood flowing freely as the Cook thrashed and tried to clutch at the knife wound in his neck. Blood spurted out and soaked the Cook’s hands and then the dirt as he bled out onto and then died.

_Red, red, red, everything was so fucking red…_

Matthew dragged the bloodied blade along his pant leg (not caring that they were technically Jacob’s pants) and handed it back. Jacob smiled at him as he took it back. 

It did not feel like a friendly smile.

It did not feel like a victory.

Matthew had just culled the herd at Jacob’s command.

Jacob had won in a really fucked up way.


	9. Whitetail deer and Capture

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> WARNING: Canon typical elements (mentioned torture and brainwashing, violence, kidnapping, drug overdose), mentioned failing marriage
> 
> Out of the wolf den and into the deer den and maybe Matthew was safer with the wolves

Whatever reputation as being one for the people against the Seeds vanished within hours.

They were whispering new things now. Not that Jacob was in danger of being stabbed in the back by his treacherous husband, not that Matthew would burn the county down to send the Seeds screaming to hell, not that Matthew would paint the county red with the blood of the faithful like a boogeyman. No… no… no…

He had followed Jacob’s order and done it well. He had culled the herd, he had killed a weak sheep pretending to be a wolf, he had weeded out weakness where no one had seen it. Now… now they whispered about Matthew being Jacob’s right hand, his best soldier, ‘Jacob’s wolf’.

That last one really sent his skin crawling. Sure, Jacob had thought he was being cute and calling Matthew ‘his little wolf’ when they were together. And sure, Matthew had gotten a laugh and maybe flushed with a little pride at being compared to one of the coolest animals out there. But back then, it was just Jacob pointing out that Matthew was a lot stronger than his appearance gave away, that he ‘had teeth’ and he could bite. Now… Now it meant that Matthew had teeth and he sank them into whomever Jacob told him too. Like a Judge only far deadlier because he was smarter, faster and people were genuinely scared of him. 

A Judge you could shoot and kill. Matthew? If everything that Hope county had thrown at him so far was any indicator and that fueled popular rumor, but not many were sure that he could be killed at this point. He had survived a copter crash, being shot and stabbed, being overdosed on Bliss and been set on fire a few times and survived close encounters with explosives. No, a Judge you could shoot and kill easily enough if you do not panic when it runs at you. ‘Jacob’s Wolf’? Might as well say hi to the reaper right then and there.

And Matthew hated it with every fiber of his being.

And he hated how there was nothing that he could do about it. Kill faithful and Chosen? It would get written off as him culling the herd and killing the weak. Making escape attempts? He was just eager to go and cull the herd elsewhere. Fighting with Jacob? ‘Upstart pup’ but that was Jacob dismissing him mostly, while also playing on that nickname that he loved but Matthew hated with so much goddamn passion.

And of course Jacob ate that shit up. His ‘little wolf’ was back and the delusional piece of shit saw it as Matthew being converted over to the Seed side of things. Because Jacob thought, even now and all that he had done, that he would still join in the fucked up shit happening in Hope county. Because…

… Because.

… Because Jacob thought that he loved him and it was actually really depressing and sad despite everything. Because sure, Matthew did not love him anymore, but some part of him still cared about the asshole’s wellbeing and all this fucked up shit meant that Jacob’s mind was fucked three ways to Sunday mental health wise. And Matthew hated that he still cared, even just a little bit because Jacob was a monster now and nothing at all like the gruffy and rough but still heart-of-gold man he had met all those years ago but… it was still there. Matthew hated himself and hated Jacob for it, but it was still there.

“You know, Jacob actually used to be a pretty decent guy once,” Matthew mumbled.

It was just him and Pratt in a dark room. Matthew could hear Judges and people screaming and wet tearing sounds outside. Culling the herd because Jacob was a monster and thought that weakness needed to be killed or cut out like an infection. Jacob was a monster.

Pratt looked up at him, huddled into a ball in the corner where Jacob had instructed him to stay like he had talked to a mongrel you hated. Matthew was in the corner across the room, not touching the bed because Jacob had told him to get some sleep and he was not feeling like playing nice but the hard conditions that he was being kept under were keeping his strength to a minimum and he just could not recover from his Bliss binge. He still felt so weak and he hated that he hated feeling weak because it felt like some sort of fucked up by proxy conditioning was sinking in and Matthew did not want to be Jacob’s wolf. Matthew did not want to be Jacob’s anything.

“Yeah, the kinda husband that came home and kissed me first thing and asked about my day. Pick me and carry me over to the couch just to cuddle. Fucker was warm. Heat can’t escape the burn scars.”

Matthew craned his head back, rolling the back of his skull against the cold walls. Why was it so cold in the mountains, but never cold enough to warrant freezing? Just enough to make you always so achingly pained with it, but never enough to damage. Matthew’s fingers felt the prickles of cold and even in Jacob’s boots, so did his toes. He still had Jacob’s jacket, it hardly kept him warm though.

“The kind that never forgot a birthday or anniversary and would sometimes bring home flowers just because.”

Pratt was still looking at him, staring with glassy eyes.

“And then he stopped coming home for longer and longer periods. Soldier work be damned, it seemed like any excuse to get out of the house, he took. He stopped doing all those sweet little things that meant so much. He started acting skittish around me, afraid to touch me, talk to me. Honestly thought he was cheating for a bit, until I realized that bastard has got the social skills of a rock and that’s fucking insulting to rocks. No… he was here… and he was laying the foundation for… this.”

Outside, someone let loose a screech that had Pratt jumping and his stomach threatening to throw a fit. He turned his head and saw a light outside. Fire.

“I’m gonna get us out of here, Pratt. This is no place for people, hardly a place for animals.”

Pratt looked to him, a question in his petrified, bruised face.

_What kind of creature was the peggies?_

“Only monsters make their home here.”

* * *

The next day, Jacob woke him up early and walked him out to a herd of cars carrying a number of Chosen. His legs dragged because it felt like gravity was physically pulling on his joints and he could hardly keep his eyes open. Nights were filled with screams, Judges howling, gunfire and loud death. Days were much the same. No peace, no chance for rest. Jacob hardly seemed to notice, just hooking a hand underneath an armpit and hurrying him along and giving him gentle nudge to get into the car himself, Pratt scrambling into the back seat. After yelling at his soldiers for a bit, Jacob climbed into the driver seat, turning the truck on with a tortured roar and leading the pack of metal beasts out into the forest.

“... Where are we going…” Matthew slurred out.

“Catch a nap.”

Matthew hated how his eyelids fell. Hated how when they opened next, the sun had moved in a telling fashion of how much time had passed and they had arrived at a clearing. He blinked and looked around blearily, seeing that driver seat empty, but Pratt in the backseat still, nervously looking out the windshield. Given that Jacob hardly said shit about what he did, he sluggishly climbed out, Pratt muttering something that sounded like ‘you should stay’ before getting out and trailing after him like an anxious puppy, as he stepped out and found Jacob standing off to the side with a few Chosen, looking over what would have given normal Matthew a heart attack. Actual fucking RPGs. But now, slipping away, Matthew just sighed heavily and decided that the smartest thing to do was not present a target to the faithful that hated him, stumbling over to a tree stump near the treeline with Pratt joining him on it, just idly watching Jacob and the Chosen go over it.

Fuck he was tired…

The Chosen lifted up the RPG and Matthew sluggishly stuck his fingers into his ears. Pratt followed his example. When the grenade hit the target with a boom, Matthew only sighed again, taking his fingers out and watching Jacob and the Chosen go over the specs casually. Like it was the paper or sport scores and not a fucking RPG. Jesus Christ his life was down some sort of shitter…

The RPG got lifted and again he lifted his hands to plug his ears.

Pratt grunted beside him. He whipped his head around, seeing someone with a hand over Pratt’s mouth dragging him back into the woods. He opened his mouth to shout, do something, only for someone to grab him and clamp a hand over his mouth. He grunted, started to thrash, only for the grenade to go off.

The ringing hid his thrashing well as he was dragged back into the woods, out of view of Jacob and the faithful that had taken to watching the demonstration. Despite his boots throwing up rocks and sticks and dirt, the trees threw the sound off as he was dragged deeper and deeper. And for a really fucked up second, Matthew got scared of being separated from Jacob. And the world really was coming to a fucking end if Matthew’s life had come to clinging to his husband for safety because at least he had an idea of what Jacob was capable of. The people dragging him and Pratt deeper and deeper into the woods? Not a damned clue and if the cruelty of Hope county was anything to go off of… that did not bode well.

He panicked… and then reacted.

He managed to throw off the hand against his mouth just enough to get his teeth into it. Before he could even break skin, the hand was being yanked from between his teeth and the person was shoving him to get him away from them. He spun on his heels, addressing his kidnappers.

“You better fucking let Pratt go,” He snarled as he addressed the camo wearing assholes.

Five of them, armed with bows and rifles and large hunting knives. One had Pratt’s head locked with one arm and used the other to keep his mouth shut. The others were tense as they stared him down.

“Let him go,” Matthew gritted out.

In the distance, Jacob’s yelling voice rang out. He had realized that the two of them were gone and now the faithful were being whipped into a frenzy to hunt them down. The camo wearing assholes looked from one another to the woods around them. They were not ready to take on the faithful then… no backup…

“I scream, he comes running,” Matthew threatened.

“Fuck it, we can’t use Bliss and I only have moose tranq.”

“... wait--”

One of the assholes lifted up their rifle and shot him with something in the shoulder. He looked at the feather thing sticking out of his shoulder. He plucked it out and threw it aside before glaring at them.

“Assholes…”

One of them simply rushed up, taking him over their shoulders and the group started running for it, the one holding Pratt letting him go to get a death grip on his shoulder to keep him running with the group. And it only took about two minutes of running for the tranq to work and for Matthew to black out.

* * *

He woke up to a pounding headache and Pratt rocking on the floor and back against the couch that he was lying on, shaking like a leaf in a storm. He managed to find his arm, pulling it off his stomach and offering it out, bumping his fingers against Pratt’s shoulder clumsily. Not peeling his eyes from the wall, Pratt reached up and took his hand, holding onto it as he kept rocking back and forth and shaking hard. He relished the warmth against his hand, as the feeling of cold slowly registered. Someone took Jacob’s jacket from him.

They laid like that for a while, Matthew slowly recovering and Pratt rocking on the floor while holding his hand like a lifeline. Eventually Matthew was able to puzzle out they were in a bunker room. That there were people in the bunker with them, but behind a door that Matthew had a feeling was locked or, at least, had someone standing outside of it just waiting for the two of them to try and step out. That his lips and mouth were dry but not horribly cracked, so chances where it had only been a few hours since he had passed out. So much for moose tranq, or he had been gaining a tolerance for tranq, which was probably worse. At least they took the ankle monitor off, one less headache for Matthew.

“Prat… you okay?” He rasped.

“Yeah,” Pratt muttered out, squeezing his fingers tighter.

“Good… sorry about lying.”

“About?”

“I said I would get us out of there… not sure who these assholes are.”

“Whitetail Militia,” Pratt said, “They fight Jacob.”

“Oh… maybe not assholes, just no manners,” Matthew britterly joked. “They say if we’re prisoners?”

“Told me to sit with you until Eli got back. Not to leave the room.”

“Who’s Eli?”

“The leader.”

“Moving up in the world.”

Eventually voices moved closer to the other side of the door, Matthew not having it in him to sit up, just sliding his eyes over to the door, listening to two people argue back and forth before the door finally swung open and a ragged and wild looking man and a lady came in.

“Oh, you’re awake,” The man said.

“Eli--” The lady started.

“I’m not dealing with this and if we go with your plan, Jacob will burn the mountain down,” Eli snapped. “Now go.”

The lady opened her mouth.

“Go.”

She closed it, glared at everyone in the room, before stomping out. The man had to be Eli then, who sighed loudly and closed the door behind him before walking over to the two of them. He ducked down so Matthew did not have to get up, giving Matthew a sympathetic look.

“Matthew Seed.”

“If that is some ploy to try and see if I’m loyal to Jacob… fuck off,” Matthew grunted out.

“Fair enough. But it’s not, you’re an infamous man,” Eli said. “Heard a lot of stories about you.”

“Where’s my jacket.”

“Wheaty has it. He figured that folks would react bad to seeing you wearing something of Jacob’s and took it off of you before we brought you here. We still have it, just hiding it right now just in case,” Eli explained. “We’re seeing if… you’re to the Seeds first. Because we have a lot of stories in your favor… and a few more recent stories against you.”

“Sir, not to be fucking rude, but I just spent I don’t even known how long with Jacob. If you plan on torturing me or stressing me to test me… fuck off and die,” Matthew grunted out, glaring at Eli.

“Neither, trust me. Just might have you help the Whitetails out when you’re better to get some more people in your favor. I know you’re a good guy, based on what happened with John. People are just questioning your history with Jacob,” Eli said, running his fingers through his wild hair. “Listen… rest now.”

“I want my jacket.”

“Uh--”

Matthew glared.

“I’ll… I’ll see to that… sleep now, Dep.”

Matthew just glared at the man’s back as he left. He squeezed Pratt’s hand back and tired to sleep.

He missed the sound of Judges’ howling. It was too quiet here.


	10. Bourbon Bites and Whiskey Burns

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> WARNING: Mentioned past m!deptuy/jacob seed, canon typical elements (torture and brainwashing, kidnapping, graphic violence, murder/killings), alcohol consumption, mentioned neglectful husband, mentioned car crashes and someone dying as a result of one
> 
> Wolf bites, bourdon bites, his pain bites

“He never put you through the conditioning?”

“Nope.”

“Well shit.”

Matthew shouldered the sniper rifle, turning the scope down to the faithful in his sights. No hesitation in pulling the trigger and blowing out the person’s brains. Nor the next person, nor the next, nor the next. If Jesse’s arrows could not take it out, he used a bullet, and if his bullets failed, her arrows did not. Until the outpost was full of dead peggies and they surveyed the bloody damage from afar. Jesse nodded grimly, lips tight before turning to look at him.

“You’re really not a Seed.”

“No shit,” Matthew sighed, no heat, rubbing the back of his neck.

“What was your name before?” Jesse asked as he pulled out his radio and called for people to come out to reclaim the outpost. He relayed a few instructions before they put their weapons away and went to go start the clean up work of getting the outpost Resistance ready.

“Heart,” Matthew said. “Funny, in the grand scheme of things.”

“Why don’t you start going by that again?”

“Habit. I’ve been a Seed since… I was eighteen, nineteen?” Matthew hummed as they trekked over to the outpost, Matthew stopping to push a body away from a mounted turret.

“Jesus,” Jesse muttered.

“Yep. And I’m forty now, almost forty one. You don’t kick a near twenty year habit with ease, kiddo.”

Jesse was only about half his age and seeing her out here killing peggies like second nature was making him feel old. But he was not only, forty was not old, not when it felt like he had been robbed of so much of his life by the fucking Seed family. He still felt like that scared twenty something most days, it was hard to shake that mental age off and come back to his body. His body that hurt and ached as he hauled corpses out to the trucks pulling up. Hauled junk and Joseph’s books to be burned.

They stayed until the people had established themselves. The guns out front would be a big help, at least.

“I’m beat, kid,” Matthew sighed as he and Jesse sat down finally, leaned against some building as the sun set and the world darkened around them. Night was the worst. Peggies during the day was one thing, but peggies at night seemed so much worse. The monsters in the dark made real, armed with so many weapons and a need to hurt.

“... Can I ask a question?”

“Oh boy. Shoot.”

“... Did you really kill the Cook at Jacob’s command?”

“At Jacob’s command? No. The Cook was going to fry a bunch of people so I tried provoking a fight on my own. Jacob, he… he approved it. I wanted to kill that sick son of a bitch all on my own,” Matthew sighed.

“Good, good…”

“Stop just… stop.”

Jesse gave him a look and that thin wall he had broken.

“How about you go off on your own for a bit, Jesse? I need… space.”

Jesse opened her mouth, but he was already using his rifle to stand to his feet and trotting off.

* * *

For the past week, Matthew had been killing faithful and Chosen during the day, and then picking a random abandoned house and sitting in the corner and listening to the soft echoes of Jacob’s voice talking about strength, weakness, gods and hunting. He felt like he was being conditioned by proxy, sitting in a dark corner and rocking back and forth and willing his exhausted mind to sleep while Jacob preached to his little world about killing the weak, making meat out of the soft and feeding the strong. His dreams were of slaughter houses and being trapped in dark corners of screaming, squealing, bloodied houses and trying to hide from the monster hunting him.

Jacob was hunting him.

The Chosen had orders to capture him, take him back.

He was shooting a lot of Chosen, he was killing so many faithful, to just keep them away from him. He did not want to go back and he was not letting a soul live with that desire in them.

Jacob included him in his sermons.

“ _The wolf is hunting in my mountains. He is culling the herd. He can smell the weak among you, even if you’ve hidden it from the Father, from the Chosen, from the faithful, **from me**. He can smell the fear in your breath, he can smell the weakness in your pathetic flesh, and he will hunt you down. He will cull the herd._”

Deputy, Rookie, Rook, Matthew, the Fifth Herald, the wolf, Jacob’s wolf.

Faithful and the Chosen screamed about ‘the wolf!’ as he ran in to kill them. The Chosen and faithful murmured in fear about ‘the wolf’ as he stalked their positions in the dark. The sobbed his name in begging for mercy as he plunged knives into them to bleed them out.

_The wolf of the Whitetail Mountains._

“ _Dep, you up?_ ”

He was sitting in someone’s abandoned bedroom. The window was cracked open and ‘Sinner’ was painted on the wall with something that smelled bad and was dark. There was an outpost nearby and the prerecorded voice of Jacob was preaching about culling the herd. The voice that used to say ‘I love you’ was now calling for human beings to be slaughtered like pigs. The voice that had once asked ‘what happened to you’ while brushing the still burning and tender scars on his face, now calling for a culling of the herd.

He ignored his radio. He had killed enough today, he had killed enough today, he just wanted rest. He just wanted peace. He wanted to pretend like the outside world did not exist for just a few hours.

“ _It’s okay dep, this isn’t about business. Just wanted to check up on you. You doing okay?_ ”

He just wanted everything to be quiet, everything to be silent.

“ _You’re doing good things here, Dep--_ ”

He screamed.

His piercing cries were mistaken for howls of a wolf, far into the night.

* * *

A week later and his sleep deprivation got to him.

He stumbled into a house and fell asleep on the couch in there, hugging his rifle to his chest.

He should have locked the door, he should have checked to make sure that he was alone, he should have been more careful _but he was just so fucking tired._

He woke up in handcuffs and in the middle of getting dragged outside. 

He yelled and fought, but he was just so tired and flailing caused his head to swim hard. Eventually he just gave up. No point giving these bastards a reason to hit him or harm him. They at least let him walk underneath his own willpower when he stopped fighting, pushing him into a truck and driving away at breakneck speeds. They kept their eyes and guns out for anyone that might have gotten in their way as they drove him out to some defaced, blood stinking building that had Judges howling in cages and faithful shaking as they watched the Chosen that had captured him, lead him into the building.

All the way through until they were met with a door that did not have claw, scratch, blood or other messes stained into the surface. They knocked and a gruff voice asked to know what they wanted. They only had to say his name before they were being called in. Jacob merely nodded from behind his desk when they brought him before the man himself. His face was calm, but Matthew knew his ticks well enough to see that his hands were shaking and that he was jittery. The Chosen were given a motion to leave and he was left there, just so tired and defeated. Jacob undid the cuffs and he just sat on the ground and leaned against the desk, nothing left in him.

“Matt?” Jacob asked, brushing scarred fingers against his face. It was probably meant to be tender. Now it was just a cold touch.

“‘M tired,” Matthew croaked pathetically, frustrated and angry tears falling down his face. A scarred fingertip caught one and smeared it into skin, hot skin against hot liquid against cold and clammy skin. “It’s too loud.”

Sleep deprivation will do a lot to a man, even a strong one. There was a reason that it could be used to torture someone to the breaking point and well beyond. While people lost their minds as their brain pan fried underneath the stress. Not letting him sleep on top of killing a lot of people, being tortured and attempted indoctrinated and every other hellishly stressful thing going on in his life and the fact that Matthew was still sane was a miracle, hand delivered by god himself. 

Jacob squeezed his shoulder.

“It gets easier,” He said, like he thought Matthew was distressed by culling the herd.

“Okay,” Matthew sobbed.

That night he laid on a bare mattress on the ground in Jacob’s room, shaking and shivering as the Judges howled and the faithful and Chosen moved outside. And Jacob sat at his desk like everything was normal and fine, the light on his desk putting the worst highlights and shadows on his scarred visage, the purple bruises underneath his blue, blue eyes. The lines in his face.

When it was clear that neither of them were getting any sleep, he reached into his desk and pulled out a bottle of something brown colored and two glasses. Wordlessly, he poured out two, left one glass on the edge of his desk and down his drink in one go before turning towards the map laid out before him. A small part of Matthew’s mind wanted to quip about what Joseph would think about Jacob drinking, it died quietly though, as Matthew dragged himself out of bed to go back to sitting at the end of Jacob’s desk with his glass in hand. Whatever it was burned his throat and made his stomach squirm, but some alcohol in his system would be the least damaging thing he had done to it lately and maybe it would help him get some fucking sleep.

“Why ‘Matthew’?”

“He was one of God’s apostles… I would give Him one last thing, before I let the faith die… also, when I came out m-my grandpa took him in while I was getting on my feet and freshly moved out of Hope county. His name was Matthew…”

“It’s a good name.”

He finished his drink and set his glass on the edge of the desk again. When he heard it being refilled, he pondered not drinking it for a moment, before taking it anyway.

“... What happened to the driver?”

“... He died. They tried to save him but… but… when he hit me, he went through his windshield… no fucking seatbelt… he flew out and skidded along concrete, cracked his head pretty hard. EMTs couldn’t get him to a hospital in time before he just… bled out.”

When he finished his second glass, he was already feeling the rosey warm glow of a buzz. He put his glass on the floor this time.

“... why… why were you driving that night…”

“... You hadn’t been home in three months. Found out that you had come back and just went straight up to the mountains, again. So I… I got into the car and was going to go spend the night at a friend’s house, before starting the divorce process in the morning.”

He looked at his glass.

“And then you went out again and finally two months later you showed up… where I was working… stuck a knife into a man’s hand…” He glared at the far wall. “And then had the fucking audacity to ask me what happened…”

Jacob said nothing. He stood and put his glass on Jacob’s desk and went to lay down again.

In the morning, when Jacob stepped away to do something, he escaped.


	11. Rosary Muzzle

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> WARNING: Canon typical elements (mentions of torture, brainwashing, drug overdosing, killing and murder and animal harm), mentions of past m!deputy/jacob seed, threats of violence, religious indoctrination

His knuckles met the wood, once, twice, three times.

Inside he heard two familiar voices, starting out normal and then raising to a sharp level of barking and arguing. He waited, waited, and waited, and then beat his fist against the door that quickly silenced the voices. Inside, he heard shuffling feet, towards the door, and when it opened, he was staring down a missile launcher.

“Hey Hurk,” He rasped.

“Matty? Holy shit, Matty!” Hurk Jr laughed, putting his missile launcher aside and rushing forward to hug him. He hugged his old friend back, resting his head on Hurk’s shoulder for a moment.

“Who the hell are you?” Hurk Senior snapped at him.

“I’m a high school friend of Hurk’s sir, I don’t expect you to remember me, puberty did me good,” Matthew lied smoothly. “I’ve been fighting peggies all day, sir. Might I crash here tonight?”

“... fine, but fucking keep it down, I’m an old cuss, I’m trying to fucking sleep!” Hurk Sr yelled, disappearing off to bed. 

Hurk watched him go off to bed, sighing and frowning like the big kid he would never grow up out of, before turning to beam at Matthew and draw him into another hug before leading him inside and up to the man’s room. Looked about as messy as it did years and years ago. Matthew watched Hurk kick some dirty clothes underneath his bed, letting Matthew sit down and just sigh, putting his dirty face into his dirty hands.

“So uh… you.”

“... me…”

“Yeah, you buddy! How the hell have you been?”

Matthew gave him a tldr of what happened since he had left Hope county. Transitioning and schooling and trying to make ends meet and years of begging to be cut free from the Seed family. He gave a much more generous recounting of the recent events. Hurk, maybe not the brightest man but still a gentleman, kept quiet and listened attentively. When Matthew told him that he had just escaped again, he nodded again before sitting on the mattress with him.

“Jesus dude…”

“Yeah…”

“... ‘m glad you got your uh trans stuff settled out, at least?”

“Yeah, me too.”

“Um… sorry about Jacob…”

“... me too…”

Hurk urged him to take his bed, but he said he would take the guest bed. In the morning he would be out of their hair. Hurk let him go to that old room, looking untouched from the decade that Matthew had not been there, Matthew laying down in full gear. Outside he could hear distant gunfire and a few Judges hollowing. They lulled him to sleep in a truly fucked up manner, into a dream of running through a forest with Judges hollowing around him, not sure where to go but knowing he had to keep running forward. All the way till morning, when the Hurks yelling woke him up.

When he made his way downstairs, he found Hurk Sr and Hurk Jr hashing it out over a kitchen table. Eggs never really cooked right, Canadian bacon and dry toast. He touched none of it, just shouldering his rifle and trying to make a beeline for the door.

“Sweet Mary and Joseph!” Hurk Sr yelped, glaring at Matthew. “Scared the shit out of me, son. You look like some fucker dragged you outta hell.”

“Sorry sir, it’s been… a really rough time lately,” Matthew grunted out.

“Don’t give me that lippy tone, you little shit. Worse than this sack of shit here,” Hurk Sr snapped, gesturing to his son.

“Oh, come on daddy…”

“Maybe you shouldn’t have lost my fucking campaign truck to those fucking godless freaks!” Hurk Sr said before turning back to snap at Matthew once again. “Listen here, boy. This worthless fruit of my groin lost my fucking truck to those Eden dumbasses. You seem semi-capable, even if it looks like the wrong side of a frat boy fuck around. Go help Hurk get it back.”

“Daddy--”

“Sure, come on, Hurk,” Matthew sighed, gesturing for Hurk to follow him outside to where he saw a car.

“Matty!” Hurk called out.

“GO!” Hurk Sr yelled, making Hurk jump up and run out the door.

* * *

“You don’t look that bad.”

Matthew was currently using a shower in an abandoned house. He had to wash off the gory remains of several faithful after Hurk had launched an explosive to a group that was too close to him. While Hurk raided the kitchen to make a meal for the two of them, Matthew had peeled himself out of his bloodied clothing and had looked in the mirror. 

The mirror showed his half dead looking face. His skin was pale to a sickly degree and the bruises underneath his eyes were dark, almost to the point of blackness.

He did look that bad, but Hurk was always a sweetie. At the very least a shower did help some, giving his skin a little flush as he stumbled out in his pants to go hunting through the house for a shirt, passing by the kitchen and getting some joke about Hurk. He found a tank top and a college hoodie in the bedroom instead, opting for both as he came out into the kitchen to inhale food like he had not touched the stuff in a week. 

He did not remember in recent days when he had eaten last, actually, or at least anything that did not come from Jacob’s hand. He tried to not think about that and how it was probably helping some by proxy conditioning. He tried to not think about how he could not sleep with the wolves and Judges howling and people screaming and gunfire, but he also could not sleep when it was quiet anymore. He tried to not think about how numb to violence he had become in what felt like a short time, how the act of killing another human being no longer made him sick nor made him lose sleep. He tried to not think about a lot of things as he just ate.

“Hey, now that we got my daddy’s truck back, you know what we should do?” Hurk asked when they had simply tossed all the dirty dishes in the sink. No point cleaning them really, even if it felt like an asshole move. The owners of the house were probably dead, indoctrinated into the faithful or gone.

“Hmm?”

“Go get Sharky! We’ll be the three amigos again!”

“Sharky is in Faith’s territory and I can’t go there… the Bliss…” He muttered.

“What?”

He took a moment to explain how Bliss affected him. Made him violent and angry and being overdosed on it made him pretty much act like a feral animal. It was how he had been captured the first time, anyway, being hunted down like one.

“Oooh… can’t you use a gasmask?”

“Surprisingly, haven’t found one and things have been busy,” Matthew said.

“Oh man, bunkers got those packed to the gills, for like uh radiation and poisonous gas and shit, mi amigo. There’s one out back, let’s go lookin’!” Hurk grinned, beckoning him to follow.

Surely enough there was a bunker out back and surely enough there were four gas masks and a box of filters for them. Matthew took one and the box, and then they both helped themselves to the ammo, guns and the pair of bullet proof vests inside. Matthew also took a jar of nails, a couple bottles of what looked and smelled like homemade moonshine and, using the skills the resistance had taught him so far, fashioned several molotovs and a few homemade grenades.

“Sooo?” Hurk teased when he had finished loading up.

“... Yeah. I’m sick of these fucking mountains anyway,” Matthew said, giving Hurk a nod and smiling a little when he cheered.

“Let’s go get our boy!” Hurk hollered, running outside to where a dusty car was parked.

The keys were on the dashboard. And feeling better than he had in weeks, Matthew was the one that got behind the wheel and started driving, Hurk helpfully keeping them on track as they drove. Drove out of those fucking mountains that Matthew would have burned to the ground in in a selfish need for revenge. And back into green and Bliss soaked pastures.

* * *

“ _So… he left the mountains._ ”

“ _Stop trying to pick a fight, John._ ”

“ _He’ll come home again._ ”

“ _In the meantime, Faith, please reiterate to your faithful that Matthew’s exposure to Bliss needs to be as low as possible. And you too. If you need aid, myself or one of our brothers will come to your aid. But I cannot stress this enough… if Matthew is overdosed on Bliss again, I cannot guarantee that he will be… humane about what he does._ ”

“ _I remember! Don’t worry, Father._ ”

“ _Good, good… in the meantime, we all need to focus on our goal. Eden’s gates will soon open. We need to be ready._ ”

Joseph cut his line of the radio, basking in the quiet for a moment. Outside his faithful were barely a whisper and in the sanctity of his church, all was quiet. It seemed so rare these days, but work was hardly ever quiet and there was so much to do. Heaven called, Eden beckoned and there was still so much to do before the Purge happened. The bunkers needed to be finished up, the last of the faithful needed to escape within and whatever converts that they could bring within the fold also needed to be placed within. As many souls as he could save, that was what his visions told him.

His visions told him a lot…

He turned to look at that beautiful Montana summer sky. The crisp blue of it… people often remarked that it was the same color as his eyes, his brothers’ eyes. Beautiful, bright, clear and pure. As he stepped over to a window, he looked around and saw the bright green of the grass and the leaves, much like the color of Bliss.

The rich, nourishing earth… much like Matthew’s eyes.

Joseph remembered Matthew’s eyes above all else. Due in some small part to being respectful of his being transgender and his medical transition, but due in a much larger and potent part to the fact that Matthew just had those eyes. The kind of eyes that years and years later, you could still vividly remember because they were just that striking. Joseph remembered Matthew’s eyes because they were just so bright and vivid, a stunning shade of lighter brown that one would hesitate between classifying as a darker yellow or a lighter brown. Full of life and vibrance and love and faith and purity.

He remembered those eyes years ago when a twenty something year old came up to him on his way home from work, asking ‘are you Joseph Seed’. And he had not really, truly been a ‘Seed’ in years, not since he got thrown into the foster care system and then tossed back out. But he remembered that name, remembered that it was once his own. ‘Yes,’ he had said. And this browned eyed youth, full of life to the point that the air around him glowed as though the sun was coming through him, bounced on his feet and declared himself a Seed too, that he was married to one Jacob Seed and of course he had remembered the name of his brother. This young person was looking for him, he wanted to reunite the Seed family.

He remembered the loving way those eyes had watched the Seed reunion in the living room of Jacob’s loving home. How they gave Joseph’s eyes a wink before leaving the room to let them have their moment of quiet sniffling and happy reunions. He remembered those eyes crinkling into true and genuine smiles when he came over, occasionally because he used to live so far away. He remembered those eyes lighting up with harmless mischief when Matthew said a slightly dirty quip, waiting for Joseph to gently, lovingly and jokingly scold him for it.

‘As a child of god, you should not say such things’, He would very gently and playfully scold.

‘I am as pure as pure comes, to God’s children, Jo-Jo,’ Matthew would say back, tilting his eyes and batting his eyelashes. ‘I go to church every service, I pray every day, I’m a married and honest _person_. I think he can let me have a dirty joke, yeah?’

He would always laugh and say yes.

Joseph looked outside and saw another truck being loaded up with guns taken from the heretics to be loaded into his bunker taking off.

His vision that told him Matthew would come home to them… he remembered that.

In the wild Montana countryside, lush and green and overgrown with Bliss flowers. The four of them standing on one side of a clearing of lush green and Matthew standing on the other side. A Judge stood at his side, Matthew’s bloodied fingers at its scruff, the bloody cross along its handsome face worn and almost washed out. They stood there, holding their arms out, seemingly beckoning him to join them on their side. With them in the project.

That was what he told the others anyway.

The details of the vision changed the much larger picture as a whole.

The blood on his fingers, staining the fur of the Judge’s scruff. The worn bloodied cross on the wolf’s face. The Bliss around them. How, no matter how hard he tried, he could not place Matthew’s face or how it looked, just a piercing stare that changed between overdosed Bliss green and furious bloodshot red. How the other hand was clenched tight until the knuckles bulged and turned white. How, despite his gripping the scruff of the Judge, how the air around it suggested that it was the Judge holding Matthew back.

Matthew being held back by the Judge. Matthew being held back by a symbol of Jacob. Matthew being held back by a symbol of Jacob that showed wear and time away from the family…

Scoffing, Joseph went over to the radio, picking it up and dialing to the channel that he knew Matthew was always on. A special channel that could only have two people on it at once, and as soon as the two were there, none could listen. 

“The others are busy right now, it is just the two of us, Matthew,” Joseph said.

No response.

“I wish to share with you, something that I know. Something I think that you should know that I know… I know that the only thing stopping you from running into the loving embrace of the family… is your resentment over Jacob. The years that made a seed of a poisonous weed that stuck deep into your heart and then blossomed. That resentment has spread to the rest of us. You hate Jacob for leaving you alone all those years. You hate John and myself, blaming us for taking him away from you, you hate us because you think he loves us more than you and that he will always choose us over you. Selfish but understandable.”

Nothing.

“You hate the project, because ‘this is what Jacob abandoned me for?’. You hate Hope county for taking all of your husband’s time. You are filled with such Wrath over such selfish reasons. It has been how you lived because if you do not hate others, you will hate yourself, right? Because surely it cannot be all your fault, right? Well… do not worry, brother. I am not here to blame you or say that the blame is yours… we did take Jacob away from you, we did make it so easy for him to run away from you, from happiness, to slip into familiar habits…”

“... _Jo-Jo._ ”

“But we needed him. We needed him for the project. We needed him to train the faithful for the new world after the purge. And you needed him too but… he made his choice. And I cannot express how sorry I am that he did not choose you. I am sorry he chose us over you and that horrible, horrible choice left you abandoned and alone… I am sorry, Matthew.”

Silence again.

“... You can come home, still. You can join us. You can make amends with Jacob and we can be a family again. We--”

“ _Me? Make amends with Jacob like it’s my fucking fault?!_ ”

Joseph paled. Wrong words, wrong words. Matthew was too headstrong to be talked too like the faithful, too strong of soul and mind.

“I am sorry, Matthew, please, just listen to me--”

“ _No, you listen me you giant pain in my goddamn ass. I’m killing every fucking peggie in this fucking county. I’m burning all your cult garbage, I’m defacing all your precious religious shit. I’m blowing up that shitty statue of you. Jacob left me alone for whatever fucking reason because he’s a fucking grade A mentally ill sociopath obsessed with extreme Darwinism. John tried to fucking drown me because he’s fucked in the head too and he’s a vicious fucking sadist that likes carving people up like fucking turky. That little sister of yours, don’t play fucking dumb about why she’s really here, likes to overdose people on drugs that refuse her because she feels powerless and needs to assert control. And you, Joseph?_ ”

Joseph fingers shivered on the button.

“ _Trying to blame God on being a selfish, murdering asshole that likes to wank it to people suffering. This isn’t the will of God or whatever the fuck you’re calling yourself. This is all you, wanting to watch people suffer, wanting to kill anyone that won’t blindly obey you. This is all you… and I’m coming for all of you. I will drag all of you fucking Seeds to court and I’ll make damned sure you call get thrown into a fucking hole that gets covered and forgotten._ ”

Joseph’s fingers tightened on the radio, until the plastic creaked.

“ _Fuck you, fuck this family, fuck this cult so you can get a sadism boner._ ”

The line went dead.

“... Matthew,” Joseph tried, hands shaking.

Silence.

Joseph let the radio drop, not letting Wrath bud within him like a bad seed. His knees met the ground and he started praying.

He prayed for Matthew.

He prayed for his family.

He prayed that the vision was false.

Joseph prayed.


	12. Glass, concrete and paint

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> WARNING: Mentioned past M!Deputy/Jacob Seed, canon typical elements (gun violence, death and destruction, mentions of drug abuse/overdose, gore, mentions of brain-washing and indoctrination, blood), mentions of sex, mentions of potentially possessive/unhealth obsessions (John and Jacob towards Matthew), anxiety attacks, PTSD episode, descriptions of a car crash and mentions of someone dying during it and someone getting exceptionally injured during it, mentions of emotionally neglectful marriages

“SHARKY!”

“I KNOW, I KNOW!” Sharky yelled, stomping the fucking out of his equipment to make the music stop. Nothing was working though and disco fever was still playing loud as ever and the Angels were still coming and _holy fuck there was a lot of Angels in Hope county_. 

Thankfully Matthew had a lot of means of killing them as they kept coming. Rifle, pistol, a shovel that he found, some brass knuckles that he found, two pistols that hung at his hips and a couple dozen grenades and molotovs that he was glad that he had made prior. Thankfully also the Angels’ Blissed laced breath was kept away from him via the gasmask. Thankfully also he had Hurk, who turned out to be pretty handy with a shotgun when he ran out of explosive ammo.

“FUCK IT! SHOOT THE SPEAKER!” Sharky yelled over the music.

Matthew tossed pistols to Hurk, letting him pepper Angels with smaller bullets to keep them back while he took out his rifle and took aim. Four bullets later and a deafening silence fell over them that had the remaining Angels pausing for a moment, before ambling towards them with zombie-like noises. The three of them easily dispatched the remaining ones and watched the others scurry back to wherever they had come from. Leaving a lot of dead Angels and the three of them feeling spent.

“Thank fuck,” Sharky grunted, putting his hands on his knees and breathing hard. “Always got my back, Hurk and uh… missed your name in the chaos.”

“Sharky, it’s me Matthew,” Matthew said, making sure to make his voice clear behind the gasmask.

“MATTY! HOLY HOT DAMN!” Sharky yelled, rushing over to him and hugging him, drawing a grunt and a grin out of Matthew as he let Sharky full body hug him. Damn, it felt good to see his old friend again. “My guy! How are you?!”

First they got away from all the bodies. Friends and heavily desensitized to violence and great human loss of life or not… it was just upsetting standing in a corpse pile. Not to mention, if they could get away from their Bliss stinking bodies, Matthew could take off the gas mask for a moment and show off how far he had transitioned, it being one of the things that the two of them talked in depth about before Matthew left.

So they walked a bit away from the bloody disaster and out to the road, standing on the side of it and keeping a look out for passing vehicles. Out there, Matthew pulled off his gas mask and grinned when Sharky’s face lit up.

“Dude! You got that man juice! You look good with a beard!” Sharky grinned.

“Still got the husband, but yay, one out of two,” Matthew sighed, pulling the gas mask back on.

“Hey, one out of two ain’t bad,” Hurk pointed out. “Better than none out of two.”

“And I mean hey… nothing says divorce like a bullet between the eyes and there ain’t exactly no cops up here to stop you-- er… besides yourself, I mean but… come on,” Sharky grinned.

“Uh huh.”

“Sharky,” Hurk scolded softly.

“It’s… fine, Hurk,” Matthew quickly said.

While the two cousins went back and forth, apparently they had been apart a minute since the territories were set up and they were eager to catch up, Matthew was faced with a question he had been dreading and almost purposefully not thinking about because it was a really complicated question that probably had a just as or even twice as more complicated answer.

Did he want Jacob to die?

* * *

Given that he was back in Faith’s territory, the Cougars were bound to hear about him. And given that he was now armed with two backyard experts in destruction of the loud and exceptionally potent variety, they really wanted him to take out outposts and burn Bliss fields.

“ _We heard reports from Jacob and John’s territories, rook. So please, be careful when you do. If you can’t, just leave it be, we’ll get someone else to do it and make sure to warn you to steer clear… we don’t need you tearing through the country side like a feral wolf--_ ”

“Don’t,” He snapped. “Do. Not… Don’t call me that.”

“ _Right… sorry, Matthew… you take care now, alright?_ ”

Matthew just sighed as he put his radio away before looking over to Sharky and Hurk. They were currently resting in someone’s abandoned house for the night, not keen on taking on anything in the dark. Hurk was cooking what smelled like a fine dinner from what was in the fridge and cupboards while Sharky tried to find a videotape or DVD or anything to put on because all the local channels were just sermons from the Seed family. They were all sick of looking at Seed faces. Matthew would cry if he saw Jacob’s.

“Unless you all want an awkward evening of watchin’ porn together and… I love you guys but not like that,” Sharky called from the bedroom, coming out with said tapes before tossing them in the corner. “Looks like we gotta entertain ourselves.”

“We’ll think of something, Sharky,” Matthew hummed from the couch.

They picked at their dinner while Matthew regaled them with some tales of what had happened since he left Hope county. Apparently they were mildly interested in finding out why exactly he had never managed to get a divorce from Jacob despite that being one of two things he had in mind when he left to go to school. Apparently John being himself and being the in-between certainly sounded like him, but Jacob not once contacting him ‘like a coward’ did not sound like him.

“I don’t know man, that big Seed man it just… I don’t know, it seems like he’d be the one to try and talk to you or somethin’, Jesus,” Sharky hummed as he idly chewed. “He’s all big on speeches like the rest of them and he’s all big on bravery and being the alpha male bullshit… just don’t seem like him.”

“I don’t know either, Sharky… it certainly seems like he still wants me… but then again he was pretty much vacant from my life the last few months before my accident…” Matthew muttered back.

“Man, he wants you like John wants you.”

“... What?” Matthew asked, turning to look at Hurk with his eyebrows hitched.

“I don’t know man, the way that John talks about you and shit… just seems like he wants you,” Hurk said with a shrug.

“Hurk that’s… that’s really fucking gross, that’s my brother-in-law I… Hurk Jesus fucking Christ don’t put that into my head, I fucked his brother for fuck’s sake, and he’s like ten years younger than me,” Mathew snapped.

“Listen, Matty, Matty,” Sharky said, putting a sagely hand on his shoulder. “... Would you really put it past the bowl of extra walnuts trail mix to be a freak towards you? Would you?”

“... I hate both of you, I’m going to bed,” Matthew groaned, getting up as the two snorted, the two giggling as he picked a bedroom and flopped on the bed and tried to will the thought of his fucking brother-in-law being obsessed with him in a fucked up way like Jacob was.

* * *

“Hey I have a question,” Hurk said as they drove a battered jeep across Faith’s territory, looking for trouble because the resistance was spread a little too thin between all the recently liberated outposts. They needed to save or convert back some people in the meantime, or at least kill peggies to give the skeleton crew outposts some breathing room to get dug in like ticks. “For Matty boy.”

“Huh?” He asked, laid out in the backseat clutching his rifle and remembering why he never liked it when Hurk drove. He was not one to get car sick, but Hurk drove like he was in last place in a death race.

“If you hate Jacob, why are you wearin’ his jacket, amigo?” Hurk asked.

Sharky, who had been scratching profanities into a handmade C-4 explosive (carefully), seemed interested in this question and turned to look at Matthew laying in the backseat.

“He gave it to me, so why not?” Matthew shrugged.

“Yeah but like, it’s got his name and shit all over it. And you hate him?”

“Don’t ask me, Hurk, I don’t know.”

“What? It like… ‘you can’t quite give him up yet so you’re clingin’ to somethin’ of his in the meantime’ sort of deal?” Hurk asked. “Why don’t you just wear the ring he gave you then? Ya know, from your wedding?”

“Because I don’t have it,” Matthew sighed, reluctantly sitting up. “I left it on the counter when I left that night. So chances are, Jacob has it or it's still sitting on the counter if Jacob kept the house.”

“... We should go look!” Sharky declared.

“I really don’t want to see what happened to my old house, you guys,” Matthew sighed.

There were just too many bad memories associated with it. And he did not want to deal with any thoughts or feelings if the place was destroyed or untouched. He really did not want to address his thoughts and feelings that he had been so sure about before seeing Jake’s face after so long and whatever brainwashing he was being put through. He was almost certain he was being brainwashed and honestly getting terrified for his mental health. 

“Just to see if it has the ring, then we leave?” Hurk asked. “Come on! If you do I’ll um…”

“Fine, fine! But just to see and then we leave, got it?” Matthew sighed, too tired to argue with both of these two at the moment. And some sick part of him was curious.

So, regrettably… Matthew gave Hurk directions to lead them back to his home.

* * *

It was pitch black by the time they had made it. Cultists seemed to spring up between them and there like weeds in rain and they had gotten delayed again and again and again, until the moon and stars were out as they slowly pulled into his house.

Matthew’s heart was hammering away behind his ribs. He had not been to this place for roughly ten years. It looked both alien and so achingly familiar. The soft blue paint was chipped and faded, the windows were grimy and dark, dead leaves littered the front porch. The garage’s roof was ladened with dead leaves and small growing plants that had taken root in the rotted sludge of the dead leaves.

It looked untouched, it looked unloved, and it broke his fucking heart.

 _What a fucking perfect metaphor for me and Jacob,_ Matthew thought bitterly as they got out.

“Hey Matty um… can we stay the night? It’s real dark out and I’m real tired--”

“Yeah, sure, whatever,” Matthew snapped, already getting his flashlight out and going up to the front door.

The door was locked. Matthew kicked it in as Hurk and Sharky wisely stayed behind, letting Matthew stand in the threshold for a moment to brace himself before striding in. Hurk and Sharky followed, also armed with flashlights, sweeping the dim beams around.

“Man, look at this place, it looks hardly touched,” Hurk muttered, low and quiet.

It did, it looked like the day that he had left, someone had locked the door and not a soul had entered it. It seemed so… untouched by everything that had happened. It felt alien, it looked alien, it felt like stepping on a bear trap and waiting for the steel jaws to bite into him. He felt sick, he felt dizzy, he felt hot and cold and clammy and dry and he hated every centimeter of skin on his body as he looked at the familiar entryway.

Everything was covered in dust, they threw open the door and started swatting it off everything as they slowly made their way inside, through the entryway and into the living room and open kitchen attached to it. For a moment, he expected to see his wedding ring on the counter where he had left it, sobbing wretchedly that night before heading out to end up in a car crash. 

But it was not. The counter was bare and laden with a thick layer of dust.

“No ring, huh…”

Which probably meant that Jacob had it… which made him feel both acute anger, sadness and depression all at once and was not something he was going to examine so closely.

“Alrighty… not touching the fridge or cupboards… let’s sleep out here after beating the couches. Open some windows Hurk,” Sharky said, using his flashlight to guide him over to a grimy window to force open.

Not much to do, so Matthew beat a couch to get the dust out of it and tried to not think about how the couches he had bought with Jacob and they had worked together to heave the two of them into the house. Tried to not think about the nights he had sat or slept on them, waiting for Jacob to come home, tried to not think about the times he had spent crying into the cushions because he realized that Jacob was not coming home.

When they had gotten as much of the dust out that they could, they all just laid out on the couches, listening to the crickets, birds and distant sound of gunfire and screaming outside. Hurk and Sharky, used to it, passed out soon enough. However… Matthew’s skin felt… _wrong_. His bones felt wrong, his blood felt wrong, everything felt so fucking wrong and after a moment of feeling like ants were crawling all over his DNA, he opted to get up to look through his house.

The living room he avoided to give Sharky and Hurk a chance to sleep again. He opted to go into the kitchen first.

The walls were the same faded yellow color. He remembered picking it because it was ‘bright and colorful but nothing too much for the early mornings and late nights’. He remembered taping everything off and painting it all by himself, beaming with pride when Jacob came home from a tour and whistled real loud and long and grinned at the ‘tasteful choice’. The stove was rusted and worn, the counters littered with dust and he was sure that the fridge was a health hazard. He had cooked meals for the Seed men here, he had lovingly prepared them Sunday dinners to have around the table that Jacob had built for him because he never could find a table that he liked.

He went out and into the hallway that went further into the house. Not much on the first floor. The kitchen, the living room, the guest bedroom--

How many times had Jo-Jo or Johnny stayed the night? How many times had a sleepy Seed come out into the kitchen and he had lovingly teased them before giving them coffee and food? How many times had he sang as he went to clean up the guest room for them, always happy to see his brother-in-laws? How many times?

He took the stairs up.

He felt like an intruder in his own home, a stranger in a familiar setting.

His flashlight swept over the hallway, still decorated with that soft, sweet mint green that he had searched weeks for and finally found. The green that he had painted the hallways and then hung his paintings and drawings and his pictures of himself and Jacob and deemed it the hallway of a home. He still remembered painting that landscape of Hope county, that picture of the church they got married in, the pencil sketch of the Seed men around his table as they laughed and played cards.

His breathing was ragged. When had he started to pant? When did the air feel so thin?

The door to his art room was ajar. He knocked the door open with his flashlight and looked in. All his supplies were still on their shelves or on the tables that he had left them on. The half finished painting of some landscape was still sitting there, untouched from when his depression and misery had robbed the creativity from his hands, heart and head. He went over to his stack of sketchbooks and flipped through them, seeing his pencil and pen sketches. When he caught sight of a loving sketch of Jacob’s back, he closed that one, before leaving the room.

When… when did he start crying? He was heaving with each sob as the tears just ran down his face when… when did he start sobbing?

He went into their room. Everything was littered with dust. He sat on their bed and kicked up a cloud of it. How many times had he slept here alone? How many times had he slept in Jacob’s arms, sweating furiously because heat could not escape the burn scars but he was a spiteful bastard. How many times had he screamed and cried into his pillows? How many times had he mewled in ecstasy as Jacob fucked him into the mattress?

When--

He got up, he ran down stairs. He was going out the door, watching a head of long, messy blonde hair as he slammed his hand down on the counter, leaving behind his ring. He watched himself run out the door.

“NO!” He screamed before running out there as well.

He was behind the wheel, he was already watching himself take off down the road. He slammed down on the gas and took off. He watched himself drive ahead of himself, taking off. Where was he going? Why was he driving that night? He kept driving, he was screaming and crying as he pushed his car past the point of no return, the engine burning up to chase ghosts. It had already happened, why was he--

He watched the car ahead of him suddenly slow to a crawl. He screamed again. He watched his car ahead of him suddenly get impacted with a car. Drunk driver, they told him when he regained consciousness in the hospital, blowing past stop signs, hit him while speeding. He watched the driver get flung through the windshield, spraying glass shards through his shattered window. He watched himself get lacerated a thousand times, he watched the twisted wreckage of the two cars spin in a circle before stopping.

When had he stopped? When had he--

He watched himself pull himself from his destroyed car. He watched himself pull himself across the concrete, pouring blood from his lacerated face and arm. He watched himself, turn himself on his back and stare up at the starry night sky. He watched himself croak out something intelligible, before reaching into his pocket to take out his phone.

_’9-1-1, Hope county, what is your emergency?’_

_‘I was just in a car accident… someone hit me I think… he’s in the corn… I taste glass and blood…’_

_‘Please stay on the line with us, we’re tracing your position now. How injured are you?’_

_‘I don’t know I… can you call my husband he…’_

_‘Please stay on the line, the medics are on their way. Do you know what happened to the other driver?’_

_‘No, he went through the glass… can you please call my husband?’_

_‘We can call him after, right now I need you to stay on the line with me.’_

Matthew stared up at the starry sky, laying on the concrete that he had laid all the years ago. He had been bleeding then. He was not now, not physically at least. There were still tears running down his face as he looked up at the beautiful night sky.

He pulled out his radio.

“... Jake, do you have my ring?”

“... _Yeah._ ”

“Where?”

“... _I keep it with my tags._ ”

“Everything hurts, Jake.”

“ _I’m sorry._ ”

“No…” He said, letting go of the button and letting the radio clatter away from him. “You’re not.”

He sobbed but there was a painful smile on his face.

“And I’m not okay.”


	13. Wolf Song

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> WARNING: Mentioned past M!Deputy/Jacob Seed, canon typical elements (gun violence, death, killing/murder, graphic depictions of violence, brainwashing/indoctrination, mentioned animal harm), brief mentions of sex

_“Come on, Jake, dance with me!”_

_Jacob just chuckled, in that endeared ‘really?’ way that he usually did when he tried to get him out of his comfort zone. But he had Jacob wrapped around his little finger and it took only a few tugs on his hand to get him to his feet and then not much encouragement at all to press flush against his front, a big hand settling on the small of his back and another more firmly grasping the hand that still held his. He smiled up at him, grinning when Jacob smiled back._

_And then they swayed as the next song started to play._

_‘Only you, can make the world seem right, only you, can make the darkness bright, only you and you alone, can thrill me like you do~’_

_“Gee Jake, where’d you hear this song?” He giggled._

_“You remember my buddy, Miller? I told him you liked all those mushy songs and he suggested a few,” Jacob grinned. “So?”_

_“Maybe I should have married Miller instead,” He snorted, stepping up on his tiptoes to kiss the ‘not funny’ little playful frown off Jacob’s mouth. Damn their six inch height height difference. “Tell him he’s got good taste.”_

_‘Ooonlllyyy yyyooouuuuu~’_

“Can make the world seem right… only you… can make the darkness bright… only you and you alone… can thrill me like you do… and fill my heart with love for only you...”

The first to go was the speakers. The sound of Faith’s voice preaching blind loyalty to the Father was pissing him off. In the dark he bore his fangs, in a grimace or a smile one could never tell, as he used a knife to butcher the wiring that led to them. One by one until the outpost fell blessedly silent. The faithful, the plump little sheep that they were, all bayed and muttered as they tried to find out what was wrong with their speakers. They found only wires. Sliced clean through.

“Only you can make all this change in me… for it’s true, you are my destiny… when you hold my hand I understand the magic that you do… you’re my dream come true, my one and only you…”

Second, any stray sheep. A hand over their mouths and one of his steel fangs in their throats and they bayed no more. They laid in the grass, bleeding dark red into the thick and lush green and fed it with human blood. Red, red, red… he fucking hated the color red.

“Only you can make this change in me… for it’s true, you are my destiny… when you hold my hand I understand that magic that you do… you’re my dream come true, my one and only you.”

Herd culled of the strays, he went in steel fangs flashing to gut the rest. Bullets lit up the night, but only in brief moments. Panicked dirty faces as he crouched down to lunge. Faithful panic shooting into the dark to hopefully get him. The glint of his teeth as he plunged his knife into another sheep. The spray of blood as he sliced through veins. The sight of his manic face as he stood over a dead sheep.

“Ooonnllllyyy yyyyoooouuuuuuuuuu~”

* * *

Hurk and Sharky found him breaking into the gas station across from the outpost that he had just turned into a bloodbath. They said nothing as he hunted through the freezer section (how it still had power and was keeping shit frozen was none of Matthew’s concerns) and managed to throw together a meal before using the gas station’s microwave to heat it all up, then sitting like a barbarian on the cashier’s counter and chowing down. They helped themselves to whatever just as he had and they all quietly ate a bunch of junk food together and listened to the static laden radio playing some song that was thankfully not fucking religious in nature.

“... Wanna talk about it?”

“No.”

“Wanna go kill some more peggies?”

“No.”

He picked at a few scabs across his knuckles, pulling at the painful skin that was red and inflamed along the dark scabs.

“... We wanna help, Matty, promise…”

“I know I’m… I’m sorry.”

Eventually, Matthew got up off that counter and simply walked outside to a car with ‘Sinner’ painted across the hood and all the windows busted out. Hurk and Sharky, worried and fretting in their own way, followed after him. When he got behind the wheel, Sharky climbed in front and Hurk got in back and he simply drove. Drove away from the bloodied outpost and the gas station that they had just technically robbed, drove down the roads some while the radio played some. They just drove around Faith’s territory, quiet and peaceful, while Matthew’s traumatized brain took a breather and he soaked up the semi-normalcy.

Until his radio buzzed.

“ _Brother, are you there?_ ”

Matthew’s knuckles turned white around the steering wheel. His jaw bulged as he clenched it tight. The edges of his vision went red.

“Uh… Matty… I realize she’s… ya know… but it’s rude to not answer a lady.”

Matthew ripped the radio off his pants, slammed it down on the dashboard and hit the talk button.

“Talk. Fast.”

“ _Hello brother, I’ve heard so much about you. Big brother Jacob especially can’t stop talking about you._ ”

“I said talk fast,” He snapped.

“ _Right, sorry! I just want to talk. No guns, no faithful, no Angels. Just the two of us for a chat. Pretty please? I really do want to meet you, brother._ ”

Sharky mouthed ‘it’s a trap at him’.

‘Probably’, he mouthed back.

“You know you can’t use Bliss on me, right? I don’t become sedated and start hallucinating,” He gritted out.

“ _I know. You may not remember it, but I was there when I accidentally overdosed you on the stuff. You uh… threw me through a window, though thankfully I landed on a ledge outside!_ ”

He did not remember that, he really wished he did. He would have loved to have seen her petrified in fear face as he threw her out of a window with intent to kill. Actually he would have loved to have seen what John thought of him in that moment, feral and eyes glowing green. Would he have squealed like the weak meat that he was?

“I don’t trust you,” Matthew settled on.

“ _I just want to talk--_ ”

Matthew threw his radio out the window, letting out a long and low breath as he focused on the road ahead.

“You know what I think you need? Beers, booze and good times at the Spread Eagle. I think you’re all Faith-ed out for the day.”

He sighed, relented, and then started following Hurk’s directions to take them back to John’s territory.

* * *

His movement was sporadic and hectic, unpredictable and punctuated with bursts of extreme violence. Like a feral wolf hunting, stalking whatever interested it for a moment before going in with talons and fangs bared wide not to eat but to maul. It had no interest in the actual hunt, but the need to hurt and shed blood. Brain tormented by the ills within it. Like Judges that were too violent for even his needs only Matthew was so much more…

Scarier.

Jacob sat in his office and looked at the map that he had been working on for weeks at this point, tracking Matthew’s movements. He knew why he was doing it, but he hated it even now. Tracking his wayward husband to keep an eye on him, out for him, trying to see how he was. The normal patterns that one would see were slowly dissolving into something frantic and needy and hungry…

Was Matthew being indoctrinated? Slowly, surely, his brain fighting even traumatic rewiring and instead of becoming docile and obedient, he became unhinged and fucking angry. Just like the Bliss made him. Matthew was unique in so many ways…

He tugged out his dog tags from underneath his shirt, pulling them out and then looking at them in the low light of his office. The light caught on the metal, steel and gold. A gold ring and a merit of his service. Honestly, the ring were the only thing he cared about. They both had worked so hard to save up the money to buy the twin gold rings, pinching every penny and working every hour that they could. They both could not get the smiles off their faces when they finally went to buy them, or the day that they finally put them on each other, that quiet day in the church. 

The ring that he had gone home to and saw on the counter and knew that he had destroyed his happy life for good.

He let his dog tags hang before looking at his hand. He never took his ring off. Not once. Not during all the blood and bile and violence of the trials, nor any culling, nor any sermon. Not even when Joseph had suggested that he ‘lay’ with some woman to give birth to a child.

That one he had made a point of staring at his younger brother while thumbing his ring. Joseph had tried all sorts of ways to get him to agree. Saying that it could only be a one time thing, saying that it was for the good of them all to carry on the Seed line, saying how the child was destined for greatness. The woman, he did not even bother to remember her name, had written him notes to try and convince them too. He stopped reading after the second one and just burned them whenever they showed up. They both gave up rather quickly.

He only wanted one person. He only wanted Matthew. He had not touched a human in a sexual or romantic way since him. He only wanted Matthew…

Sighing, Jacob tuned into his radio and listened to the faithful chatter and tracked Matthew’s movements. It sounded like he was headed back to Fall’s End.

“ _Can make the world seem right… only you… can make the darkness bright… only you and you alone… can thrill me like you do… and fill my heart with love for only you…_ ”

Jacob’s head snapped to his radio.

“ _Only you can make all this change in me… for it’s true, you are my destiny… when you hold my hand I understand the magic that you do… you’re my dream come true, my one and only you…_ ”

He picked it up, clutching it close as he listened to that raspy voice crooning _that_ song.

“ _Only you can make this change in me… for it’s true, you are my destiny… when you hold my hand I understand that magic that you do… you’re my dream come true, my one and only you._ ”

“M… Matthew?”

“ _Only yooouuuuu._ ”

The radio cut and Jacob was left shaking and feeling sick.

* * *

“I present, the one… the only… Matty!” Sharky yelled as he went into the bar, Matthew trailing behind him to the night crowd that cheered lightly and tastefully as he stepped through. He merely nodded before trudging up to the counter as Mary May came out with a ‘you have to be tired’ smile and an order of whiskey for him. He casually enjoyed it as Hurk and Sharky met up with friends that they had not seen in awhile.

“You sir, look exhausted,” Mary May smiled at him as he sipped his drink.

“Feel exhausted,” Matthew sighed.

“Well, as much as I would love to give you a couple of drinks to make your sorrow lighter, mister…”

“Don’t worry, just… just something for the edge. And if you have anything hot to eat?”

Two whiskeys and some nice hot soup and bread later and Matthew was making his way to the church as the Spread Eagle lit up with Hurk and Sharky. There, people were being quiet for those sleeping, and it looked like a few mattresses had been laid out to replace the sleeping bags. He eagerly picked one and went dead weight into it, sighing contently.

“Good things, Matthew?” Jerome asked quietly from where he sat by the altar.

“... Forgive me father, for I have sinned,” Matthew deadpanned, closing his eyes.

“Sir, I am now concerned.”

“I fucked with Jacob, and it felt good.”

“Oh well… I think god will forgive you for that, considering everything.”

“Yeah… hope so, because I went for the low blow.”

Jerome chuckled. Matthew hummed ‘Only You’ underneath his breath until he passed out.


	14. Feral

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> WARNING: Canon typical elements (language, violence, drugging and kidnapping, mentioned torture, mind break/mental conditioning), mentions of sex, descriptions/mentions of extreme gore and violence (a man being torn apart), brief cannibalism metaphors

“ _Johnny, are you ignoring me?_ ”

John frowned at his radio, but nothing with heat or anger, but more fear and concern. 

Because… _Matthew had spent the past hour taunting him_.

And perhaps John understood some small part. He was overeager in his attempt to wash his brother clean in the holy waters and had crossed a line (not that he would ever admit it outloud). And perhaps holding the other deputy’s health and wellbeing over his head while he tried to find a way into John’s bunker was going a bit too far. And perhaps the Bliss incident was also crossing a line. Perhaps all of this was Matthew’s sin… Wrath.

But this… this was…

“ _Jooohnnnnyyyy._ ”

John put his face in his hands, breathing out before parting his fingers to look at his radio. He knew that no one would be happy if he responded, and it would probably only spur Matthew on to torment him further. But by God… something about Matthew was just too much to just ignore. Maybe it was the jealousy that John still admitted to having (Greed, Lust, Envy) over the fact that Jacob managed to get a happy marriage to a great person, that he still desired that connection that his brother once had with Matthew. Maybe it was his feelings over Matthew, the conflicted ones he knew were wrong and tangled together with old and happy memories.

“ _Johnny! Come on… answer me… pretty please?_ ” Matthew growled out in threat on the other end and John can just see the bared wolf teeth meant for him. The glint of white that begged for a red staining. Hungered for it.

“ _Oh well. I’ll call again, Johnny Boy. You have someone important to me and you **will not** keep her for long. Got it, John?_”

John just stared at his radio and waited for the feeling that he was staring down a predator to go away.

But that feeling did not go away for a while.

* * *

“Alright so…”

The Spread Eagle was busy that night. Matthew, Hurk and Sharky took out several Bliss silos, used Nick’s help to take out a few Peggie planes and liberated another Outpost. Not to mention, they got Grace back from protecting her daddy’s grave, and gunned down every Peggie at the Seed ranch and took that too. All in all, it was a damn fine day for the resistance and so, people were letting loose at the Spread Eagle. And after a few beers, or more like a lot of beers, Matthew found himself at a table with Hurk, Sharky and Grace while everyone else partied and drank themselves stupid around them.

“So?” Matthew asked, sipping his whiskey.

“Listen, I’ve had a few beers and my brain is super curious,” Grace drunkenly drawled out. “But you was married to Jacob, right?”

“Unfortunately,” Matthew said. Hurk and Sharky were looking on and suddenly he got nervous.

“Listen, listen, listen… I have a bet with some people… about which Seed is a worse lay.”

“Oh lord.”

“Listen, Matty, my man, my dude, my bro, my… compadre… my money’s on Joseph,” Sharky said, nearly spilling his beer leaning in as though it was a secret and he was whispering. But he was actually kind of loud because it was loud all around them. 

“I know he’s a… nutty little thing with sex addiction issues, but my money’s on John,” Hurk said.

“And my money’s on Jacob. Man _reeks_ of issues,” Grace said, trying to look serious with a drunk’s blush going on. “Like… all sorts of issues, you know what I mean? So like… you can prove me right. So like… Matt… is your husband a bad fuck?”

Matthew stared while nonchalantly sipping his whiskey.

“No!” Grace gasped, completely scandalized. “He’s gotta have size issues, right?”

Matthew sipped his whiskey while continuing to stare without breaking eye contact.

“No!” Hurk groaned, putting his face in his hands.

“Oh come on, he’s gotta suck at something in the sack!” Sharky whined.

Matthew sipped his drink.

“Goddammit,” Grace muttered, taking a handful of bills out of her pocket and tossing it on the table.

“You know what? I’m drunk as fuck, give me something for the road, Matty boy!” Sharky cheered, taking one of the bills and stuffing it into his pocket.

“Fucker likes biting and scratching.”

“Oh that shit I believe,” Grace grumbled, tossing back her drink before waving down Mary May for another.

Matthew just snorted and went about savoring his whiskey peacefully while the three went back to mourning this new cursed knowledge. Eventually they settled back into talking about other things and it all became background noise to him. Through the hours until all the drunks were being ushered to go sleep it off and nurse their likely to be heinous hangovers in the morning. And Matthew, who had wisely just had two whiskeys, just sat at his table until it was his three very drunk friends that he would likely need to walk over to the church to do the same.

“Okay, one more and I can say this and Gracie Wasie, plug your ears,” Sharky said.

“Actually… Imma go puke,” Grace said before lurching up and racing to the bathroom to do just that.

“Perfect! So Matty,” Sharky said, actually lowering his voice because Cassie and Mary May were still there. “If Jacob wasn’t a bad fuck… how come you two never had kids?”

“He was never around enough,” Matthew shrugged. “Found out later that I have fertility issues and I only had about half the days that a normal afab person has where they can get pregnant. About that time was when he was coming out to the mountains instead of home so…”

“Ah geez, Matty… sorry.”

“Not your fault.”

Matthew got the three to the church to sleep off their hangovers, picking a spot by the window to look out at the night as he listened to sleeping, slow breathing and the distant sound of gunfire, screams and the ever distant ring of the howls of Judges. Deciding to indulge in a rather bad old habit that he had picked up while waiting for Jacob to come home and quit when he went on to become a cop and bummed a smoke from someone’s bag and lit it up. The familiar taste of cancer on his tongue and in his lungs brought him back to blue and lonely times and strangely settled his heart as he looked out at the moon overhead.

“... He might have been a decent dad at one point, I guess,” Matthew said to the night. Because the night would just quietly listen and not judge him and his twisted thoughts and actions, marred by memories, trauma and recent events. “One of those dads that's… ‘a loveable hardass’, sort of deal. Shotgun waiting for the prom date, insisting on a military grade tank for a car because he can’t trust other drivers nor the poor kid driving, ‘I’m going to teach you every life skill I’ve ever learned’ sort of deal…”

He flicked the ashes off and took another lungful, his lungs burning from the poisonous smoke that he was breathing in but staying quiet. No reason to be a pink lung when he used to smoke so much. He only needed one anyway. His body itched for violence and whiskey more anyway, the need to bare his fangs and make peggies crumble underneath his claws.

“Not now though. I wouldn’t trust anyone’s kid with him, let alone one of his own…”

Matthew picked up his radio. His fangs were bared.

“What happened to the man I used to know? What happened to the gentlemen whose arm I clung to? What happened to the nice man I married?”

A snarl, a sound no human could make but he was hardly feeling human nowadays, rumbled through his chest like thunder before a great storm.

“Who is this monster wearing his skin? Maybe if I peel the skin away, I’ll get Jacob Seed back? Huh? You pathetic pretender wearing my husband’s skin? What if I rip and tear that false pelt away with my fangs and claws? What if I eat you alive?”

No response. He knocked the ashes off and took another lungful of cancer.

“You don’t make wolves, Jake. You make Judges.”

Matthew cut the line and put out his cigarette.

He had to save his friends.

* * *

“ _He’s out of control. He needs to be stopped._ ”

“ _What do you suggest?_ ”

“ _The conditioning. The Bliss might not work, but the conditioning will at least put a leash on him. Maybe having him kill one of his friends in a rage will sway him over to the family once again? I would hate to have to resort to that, but at least having a trigger for him will make him less likely to attack._ ”

“ _Alright… I have an idea of how you’re going to do it too._ ”

* * *

“ _Brother?_ ”

“Hey John, you got Hudson for me or do I really have to blow up your bunker?”

“... _Wait, what?_ ”

“I am currently standing outside your bunker and I have supplied Hurk and Sharky with all the explosives that I can get my hands on within your territory… plus a few homemade ones,” Matthew said as he watched Sharky stick another block of C-4 to the wall of John’s bunker, around the door. Hurk was helping wire everything together. “We estimate we might just break through… or wipe Hope county off the face of the planet, either or is good.”

“ _It is a very good thing that I have indeed called about your friend then,_ ” John quickly said. “ _I want to trade. Your friend can go to your… heathen friends in Fall’s End and you come home._ ”

“John… you’ve tried to drown me before, what the hell makes you think I’ll trust your punk ass?” Matthew asked.

“ _I am afraid that you will just have to trust me… I do wish to bring you home. You are far more valuable to me and this family than any of those heretics. You have to trust that at least. And if you're with your family, then you won't destroy my things._ ”

Matthew grunted. He hated how much sense John was making and… he really needed to get Hudson away from him. She had already been with him too long and there was not telling what torture he had put her through already. And he was himself, he could probably get his own ass out of the fire after getting captured. If nothing else, he was likely to be handed over to Jacob and he had that asshole wrapped around his little finger.

What was important was that he was being given a chance to get Hudson free...

“...Fine,” Matthew sighed before turning to the destructive cousins. “Hurk, Sharky, hold off on the explosives, I think I found a way to get Hudson out… it’s dumb.”

“You have my attention!” Sharky yelled.

“Where do you want this to happen, jackass?” Matthew radioed in.

* * *

Matthew may have admitted the trade was dumb, but he was not going to be dumb about it. He got Grace to watch his back from a ways back, hidden away and he had Sharky and Hurk stationed at the two most likely places that John would escape. At the very least he felt covered as he met up with John in the dead of night out in some stretch of land, the moon overhead and the stars shining bright. Would have been a beautiful night otherwise…

He stood by his lonesome per John’s instructions. When an armored truck came rolling up, he merely kept standing there, waiting for the truck to stop a distance away from him and shut off. Four people got out. Two peggies with rifles, John himself, and Hudson, who still had duct tape across her mouth and around her wrists as John roughly handled her in front of him and before the truck.

“Are you alone?”

“Do you see anyone, dumbass?”

John merely frowned, saying nothing as he gave Hudson a shove forward. She stumbled, shaking as she realized that this was real and really happening, turning to look back once at John. When he did nothing but cross his arms over his chest, she quickly turned around and dashed towards him, fresh tears spilling down her face as she gingerly ran over him, meeting him and just collapsing against him, sobbing behind the tape.

“Here, Joey.”

He took a knife and freed her hands, before gingerly peeling the tape off her mouth, a fresh sob escaping her as her mouth was finally freed. He made a show of giving her the knife, so that John could not bitch about ‘if he was armed or not’.

“Go down the road, towards a ruined gas station. There’s a sniper on the roof, her name is Grace, she’s going to get you to Fall’s End, okay?” He explained, gently taking hold of her biceps.

“Matt,” Hudson croaked.

“I’ll be okay. I’m sorry it took so long to get here, but you’re safe now. Get to Fall’s End and take a load off, I’ll be back soon,” Matthew smiled at her.

Hudson sniffled, but given that she was being tortured for who knew how long at that point, agreed. She gave him a nod, fumbled forward into an awkward hug, and then started walking down the road. He made sure to watch her until he knew she was closer to Grace than John, well out of his goon’s piss poor accuracy range anyway. When she was ‘safe’, he turned to address his brother-in-law, scowling as he raised his hands and put them on the back of his head and slowly walked over to them.

“So, where are we going?” Matthew asked when he had made it over, getting frisked quickly before being grabbed and shoved towards the truck. He got in back, sandwiched between the goons while John made it up front.

“To the mountains,” John said flatly.

“Oh yeah, I’m going to be Jacob’s headache again,” Matthew drawled out.

“Hmm… not quite.”

Matthew blinked at the back of John’s seat, wondering what the hell he was talking about, completely missing the syringe until it was already in his neck and being emptied into him. He started flailing, but he was crammed in and the faithful had the advantage of knowing what was going on and anticipating his reactions. He swung and flailed and clawed and bit until his vision went hazy and fuzzy.

“Let’s put a collar on you, ‘little wolf’,” John chuckled from the front seat as Matthew’s vision broke apart into blackness.

* * *

When he woke up, he was in a chair. A very familiar kind of chair too and in a very familiar kind of room too. Jacob’s torture chamber, where he conditioned his foot soldiers. Except, Matthew had a sinking feeling that Jacob was not going to save him this time, thrashing violently against the restraints as the door opened to reveal John and one of Jacob’s faithful.

“Sir, I don’t… I’m scared of what the Soldier will do to me,” The faithful said, clearly anxious, eyes blown wide, face pale.

“I’ll deal with Jacob, you just start the conditioning… how does it work?”

“Well, we load them up with slow release Bliss,” The faithful said. “Which we did, at a very low dose at your request, sir. Once it starts releasing, we start the song and then unleash them on the others.”

“Good. Do it.”

Matthew fought, feeling the restraints bit into his wrists as the faithful came forward with a little music box. He tried to force his chair back, only to feel how it was bolted to the floor. He gritted his teeth and glared, at the very least, not giving John an ounce of fear. Small and fragile ego sadist, he would have loved Matthew being scared.

“You brought this on yourself,” John smiled, a smile like broken glass that threatened to tear Matthew open again, just like the car accident. “You should have controlled your Wrath, brother. You should have just behaved and listened to the Father. You should have just been a loyal dog.”

The music box was cranked and the lid was being lifted.

“ **Only yooouuuuuuuu~** ”

Matthew’s vision went red.

* * *

His teeth were dying for a drink. Red hot red mercury. The squeals of the dying to fill his starving belly. His fangs begging for new bones to sharpen on. An acute _hunger_ filled him to his brim, but also hallowed him out until he felt the ache in the marrow of his bones. He was so fucking hungry, his very soul ached from the pain of his hunger, begging to be full and warm and content.

He was _hungry_.

He was a wolf and he had to hunt sheep, that was what wolves ate. Also piggies and rabbits, dumb enough birds, fish if he was feeling adventurous. He was the only fucking wolf out there and the world was his fucking pantry, begging for him to feast. He was the only fucking one. Only me, only you. His teeth ached to break bones and his belly begged for blood to quench his painful thirst.

Where were you, little sheep? Over the hills and through the woods, not even at grandma’s house. He checked. Of fucking course he checked, he was fucking starving to death out here, where were all the fucking sheep? Across the river and in the caves and hiding in buildings and through the fucking woods again. Not one fucking sheep. At this rate he was going to fucking die, he could feel it, the sharp pain down to his very fucking bones was getting sharper and deeper and pained whined kept escaping him as it got harder and harder to run. His hunger was killing him, if he did not eat a fat sheep or pig, he was going to fucking die.

Where were--

A sheep.

Drool rained from his mouth as he stared down the bleating sheep that had seen him. Its fur was painted with black streaks of something and it was dirty and nasty but he was sofuckinghungeritfuckinghurtwhydiditfuckinghurt.

“ _Good._ ”

He snarled and snapped and took off, ignoring the all over pain in his body as he took off after the sheep as it took off running. He snarled, teeth pulling his face into a hungry smile as he took off with reckless abandon after the sheep that his body craved. Needed like a drug. Needed like air after being held down too long for a baptism. He needed that fucking sheep and he needed its blood and flesh between his teeth right fucking now!

“ _Good, cull the herd._ ”

Weak meat, but better sheep would come of it. Weak meat but his belly was empty and eating itself to keep the hunger at bay. Weak meat that brought the rest of the herd down. Pick off the weak, feed the strong and this sheep was so fucking weak and he was so fucking strong, he deserved it. The sheep deserved it. And it was so fucking close, he could almost reach out and snap its thin leg with his talons. Drool filled his mouth with the thought of filling it with blood.

“ _Faster. Stronger._ ”

He ducked down and fucking launched himself forward, taking the sheep to the ground where it screamed like a man.

“ _Cull the herd._ ”

He reared his talons back and snapped them forward, tearing the sheep apart with wild bloodlust. Blood sprayed everywhere as he tore in and tore apart. As he ripped the weak meat apart like it deserved. As he culled the herd because he was strong and this sheep was not.

The dying screams filled his belly and he was finally fucking full.

* * *

“Jesus Christ, sir I--”

“I… I know,” Jacob muttered as Matthew was dragged through the fence. A chunk of viscera fell off of him with a wet thud that had several people turning green. Even with the necessary brutality of his territory, what Matthew had done to that faithful that he had caught in his mindless state was… even his own battle hardened stomach was struggling and squirming.

They took him out to where they hosed down Judges after one too many hunts. Jacob took over then, shooing his faithful away before taking the hose to get most of the blood off of Matthew, most of the… chunks of the dead man still painting him. He was surprised that the ice cold water had not woken Matthew up, but he had almost killed himself running after that faithful and the kind of energy that someone needed to literally tear a man apart with their hands had to be up there. 

Still… he got Matthew washed off and then carried him inside, gingerly pulling blood stained clothing off and replacing it with something clean and dry of his before putting him into his bed. And then he got his bottle of whiskey out of his table, ripped the top off and just took several gulps out of it before putting his head in his hands and trying to not vomit because…

Matthew was on the starting road to being conditioned and he _never_ wanted that to happen to him. Anyone but him, not Mathew… Jacob picked up his radio, hands shaking.

“Jo… Joseph…”

“ _I know._ ”

“You fucking knew?!” Jacob snapped, anger filling him up until his vision turned red.

“ _He’s out of control, Jacob--_ ”

“I watched my fucking husband tear a man apart with his bare fucking hands, Joseph!” Jacob _screamed_ at his radio. “And it wasn’t one of the fucking resistance. He picked a faithful, Joseph. Does that sound like a fucking leash or a feral dog that just got kicked?”

“... _He did what?_ ”

“You know what? Fuck you, Joseph. You fucked up and just like always, I’ll clean up your fucking mess and keep you from getting hurt by your stupidity, again!”

Jacob cut his line and just put his face in his hands.

_“You don’t make wolves, Jake. You make Judges.”_


	15. Down the Rabbit Hole

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> WARNING: Canon typical elements (Mentioned brainwashing and mindbreak, mentioned violence towards animals, mentioned drugging, canon typical violence, canon typical gore, death of throw away characters), possessive and unhealthy behavior (Jacob towards Matthew), mild language

The collar was new. It still pissed him off like no one’s business as he openly tried to get it off.

“Really now, can’t you just leave it alone?”

“Suck my dick, John.”

A family meeting. An honest to god family meeting of the Seeds. One of which was awkward as all hell considering that Jacob would not stop staring like he was about half a second from gutting John and Joseph himself, and made worse by the fact that he was gripping his knife hard enough to make the handle groan and his scarred knuckles bulge and turn white. John and Joseph had the good nature to, at least, wilt underneath the murderous gaze and keep their eyes down. Faith seemed too nervous to speak at all, just looking between her three adopted brothers and Matthew as he tried fiddling the fucking collar off.

“We overstepped a line,” Joseph finally said.

“No. Shit,” Jacob growled out, the knife’s handle whining loudly underneath the pressure of his hand.

“We are… sorry, Jay,” John said quietly, head ducking down when Jacob’s furious look snapped to him. Somehow he still found the courage to speak, almost admirable for a whimpering little sheep. “We did not expect him to… but he did and… and now…”

“And now if he hears the song, he’ll go feral,” Jacob gritted out, the scars on his face angry and red and looking almost raw because of the pumping blood underneath the damage tissue. “You made a bomb.”

“Well just don’t play the song--”

Jacob shifted forward and John startled back, stumbling away from his older brother. Matthew did not have it in him to give a shit that Jacob was being the big bully and scaring his younger brothers.

“We overstepped a line and we made a mess,” Joseph stressed, pulling out the hard face of the ‘the Father’. Jacob was not intimidated, glaring right back at him. “But the original point of it still stands. Your husband is dangerous, and he’s hurting our family, he’s hurting the flock, he’s delaying and destroying the project. He cannot be left as is.”

“Isn’t it your job to recruit?” Jacob snapped back.

“Yes, but your husband has about as thick a skull as you,” Joseph bit back, glaring at his older brother. “Trying to get to him has failed time and time again. And, while I would have just left him with the heretics, to die with when the purge comes, my visions tell me of him. My visions show me that he embraces us--”

“Visions this, visions that, fuck your visions Joseph!” Jacob snapped back. “What the fuck have your visions done so far to make him believe in you? John almost fucking drowing him? Faith overdosing him on Bliss and sending him into a berserker frenzy? You and John putting him through the conditioning?! How the fuck is ANY of that supposed to convince him to come home? That we’re the good guys?”

“Jacob--”

Jacob turned around, grabbing his shoulder briskly and yanking him along and out of the room. He had to give up on the collar and focus on putting one foot in front of another, trying to make up for being led so roughly and Jacob’s longer legs and feeling the blunt pain of the tips of Jacob’s fingers digging into his shoulder as they walked out of the building. Some building in the little space that was Joseph’s territory. He could hear Joseph yelling after them, but Jacob was already dragging him out to the truck that they had showed up in.

“You’re… fucking hurting me, Jacob!” He hissed out when Jacob’s fingers dug in a little further. Sure, Jacob was not built, but it was all wiry muscles instead and military training had given him impressive hand strength.

That worked like a charm, Jacob’s hand disappearing. And for a moment, there was no anger, there was no annoyance. No… heartbreakingly, for half a second, he looked like the man that Matthew had married all those years ago, standing there and staring at him, hand hovering between the two of them. For a second, he looked human, he looked… sad.

Then whatever the fuck was calling itself Jacob Seed was back and he got a push towards the truck and he took the hint. He got in the passenger's seat and Jacob got behind the wheel and Jacob tore away from Joseph’s territory. On the bridge out, his Chosen that had followed picked up after him, keeping guard against potential resistance attacks. But with Matthew with him, it was unlikely. Matthew could still daydream of a heroic rescue and whisking away from this nightmare that he found himself in.

To think, years ago he would have done anything to close the distance between him and Jacob. Now he would have done anything to get the fuck away from him.

“... I didn’t want this to happen.”

“Yeah, well, it fucking did. And from what I understand, you can’t do shit about it.”

Jacob went silent and he went back to trying to get the collar off again.

“... Did that asshole even tell you what his visions of me were?”

“A clearing. You on one side and the rest of us on another. You have a Judge with you,” Jacob grunted out.

“Might as well be the Judge now, huh?” He bit out.

Jacob had nothing to say and he almost seemed upset and sad that Matthew had said that. His mouth twisted up into a malicious grin at the thought.

* * *

The first night, Matthew was left alone in Jacob’s room. He was pretty sure that Jacob was still upset about his comment earlier and could not find it in himself to give a flying fuck. Just enjoy a moment without seeing his stupid fucking face and trying to will away the hot simmer layer of anger in his stomach was not going away. Something was so very wrong with him and he… was scared.

Maybe it was best he was left alone, because it gave him the willpower to look through Jacob’s desk and find a radio. One that he could tune to a resistance channel.

“ _Jesus, Matthew, where the hell have you been?_ ”

“John traded Hudson for me, and then he… he put me through the conditioning, Eli,” Matthew grunted out, feeling sick for admitting it. “That stupid song got played and… I went feral. Apparently ran a few miles before finding a Chosen and tearing him apart with my bare hands… Jacob has me here now with a collar…”

“ _Christ, Dep, I’m sorry… I..._ ”

“What do I do, Eli? Is there a way to undo the conditioning?” Matthew asked, feeling and probably sounding desperate.

“ _We have a few… ‘debugging’ programs. But that would mean you getting here and… we can only do so much. Really undoing the conditioning would require a lot of time and resources that we don’t have,_ Eli explained.

Matthew put his face in his hands.

“ _I am sorry, Dep._ ”

He scrambled the signal and put the radio back where he found it. He laid down and tried to get some sleep.

His dreams were of being on a leash, Jacob holding it, as he went about snapping and snarling at his friends. Jacob let go at one point and he just rushed forward and he tore them all apart. And when he woke up, he swore he still tasted blood in his mouth and it tasted so much like blood, glass and concrete from years ago.

He woke up exhausted. He still had the fucking collar on. He took two seconds and just sobbed hysterically, bunched up into a ball on Jacob’s bed. When his crying seemed to spark a wave of howls from the Judges outside, he took to screaming himself hoarse, trying to drown them out. When that failed, he went back and silently sobbing into a tight ball and trying to will it all away. He thought for a moment about falling back into old habits and praying but… the thought of God right now made him sick and he had just stripped his throat raw trying to drown out the Judges with screaming. 

When Jacob finally came up, he found him sitting on the bed, eyes still red. He merely grunted.

“I’m going to another Outpost for a while. You’re staying here.”

Something hysterical bubbled up inside of him. Fresh tears streaming down his face, he looked up and gave his husband a broken and sharp thing that might have been a smile in a horror movie.

“Leaving me alone again, Jake?”

Jacob looked like someone had just nailed him in the stomach. He just laughed, throat hurting like hell and he was probably tasting blood at this point. But he just found his husband being upset so fucking funny. After all these years of hurt, the stoic piece of shit could feel something? Who knew? Matthew did not know. He did not know anything about his husband.

He laughed until Jacob stomped out of the room. He laughed until he heard Jacob’s truck speeding away. He laughed until he puked. He laughed and he laughed and he laughed and he laughed and he laughed.

And he laughed.

And he laughed.

And he laughed.

* * *

Matthew should have known that some of the faithful would not take kindly to him. Given how many he had killed, how many were blindly loyal to the Seeds and how he kept fucking them over at every turn. He was their boogeyman, the reason why they shivered in the night. He was the Soldier's wolf. He was the bane to Project Eden. Murderer. Heretic. Monster. Feral wolf.

Being left alone, he should have known some shit would have happened.

Should have known better than to let some Faithful bark an order at him to get up and come outside because Jacob was calling for him.

Should have known something was wrong when he was marched out to the Judges’ cages.

“What--”

The door was thrown open and he thrown in. The cell door was slammed shut behind him. He looked up to face the Judges as the sound of running feet sounded off behind him.

A feral wolf looked at a pack of feral wolves staring back at him.

* * *

Being greeted by a fearful Chosen that stammered out a plot to kill his husband was indeed, not a good way to come back to the compound.

Past stuttering lips as he gripped their fearful throat, the Chosen told him of how several disgruntled faithful had waited for him to leave before one drew Matthew out from Jacob’s room and walked him out into the yard, in the back with the big cages of Judges. Matthew had been shoved inside and the faithful had left the area so that no one would be witness to Matthew being torn apart by Judges.

“B-b-but sir, the-e Judges th-they… they started growling and howling and t-th-then it got real quiet an-and we heard them screaming and th-then it got real quiet and…” The Chosen swallowed thickly, Jacob could feel it against his hand. “It’s been real quiet back there, s-sir.”

Jacob threw them against the ground before turning to address the treacherous faithful that lingered in the welcoming yard. They refused to meet his eyes and he wondered how many of them were just waiting for this moment. When he would leave Matthew alone yet again.

With a snarl, Jacob marched out to the back yard. Hearing his weak meat faithful trailing behind him, urging him to leave it alone. And as Jacob marched out into the back yard, expecting to find a dead husband in the wolf pin, shredded between half a dozen teeth that would feed on everyone involved in putting Matthew in that cage… 

… he did not.

No… sitting in the wolf’s pin, with a Judge’s head in his lap and petting its sullied fur in a disgusting parody of tenderness, was Matthew. His mouth was bloodied, obvious that his teeth had been tasting blood. His hands were bloodied, the knuckles raw and red and bruised almost black, the same with his nails. His face was scratched and bruised and bloodied and his eyes… there was something viscerally not right about his eyes as they slowly slid up from the Judge and to the group gathering around the cage. Something visceral upsetting about the gore stained smile that he gave them. The Judge in his lap cried in fear and gave Jacob, _Jacob_ , a silent pleading look for freedom.

And Jacob could see. The Judges were hurt, all of them. Bloodied fur where teeth and talons had ripped through and gotten to flesh. Curled up limbs that had been hurt. When a few wolf mouths parted, Jacob could see bloodied insides with missing teeth. A few Judges had bloodied ears and the obvious marks of human teeth.

“Who,” Jacob growled.

Matthew moved to sit up, the Judge bolting to join the others hugging the edges of the cage. He moved quietly and with inhuman fluidity towards the door. Jacob went over and opened it, despite several screeches of fear behind him of his traitorous faithful. His weak faithful that had to resort to backhanded and backstabbing of all things.

They had to be culled.

Matthew stepped out.

And the culling was here.

Jacob could hardly be bothered that Matthew took the knife from his thigh, just casually shut the wolf pin door and then picked a nice spot to watch Matthew hunt down the ones that threw him into the pin. He felt both pride and absolute disgust grip his heart as he watched Matthew, all five and a half feet of him, act more feral wolf than human as he hunted. Pride at watching the culling, the weak get slaughtered and this hunter, this strong hunter with no equal, do it.

Disgust… he did not want to address.

Once the last laid dead, people staring in horror at the bodies littering the ground, Matthew stumbled over to him. He watched passively as Matthew came up to him, bloodied hands going grab his arms crossed across his chest. One hand stubbornly held the knife still, Jacob felt the brush of hot, blood caked metal against an unburned part of his arm.

“Stop…” Matthew, breathless and panting, paused to catch his breath. And then laughed, manic and upset, bloody teeth bared. “Stop… stop leaving me the fuck alone!”

Jacob’s heart hammered against the back of his ribs. He was not sure why, but there was a deep seated panic bubbling in his stomach as he looked into the manic and broken eyes of his husband. Not human, but feral eyes. The eyes of a Judge.

Hope county had broken the man before him and Jacob was beginning to wonder if he had helped a little too much. 

_As much as I wish not, this does not have a happy ending._


End file.
